2.39 How to be your own best personal assistant

If you ever feel disorganised, chaotic or behind, then maybe you need to spend time in "personal assistant" mode! In the episode, I discuss how to help prepare for your future self, to make tasks feel easier, more organised and even more pleasant. I explain how to use this approach to be more productive and help you work more effectively - and why it can feel so good!

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. My weekly podcast, The PhD Life Coach covers the most common issues experienced in universities, including procrastination, imposter syndrome, and having too much to do. I give inspiring and actionable advice and often have fun expert guests join me on the show. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you already listen, please find time to rate, review and tell your friends!

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

#phd #academia #lecturer #professor #university #procrastination #overwhelm #amwriting #writing #impostersyndrome #timemanagement #support #coaching #highereducation #research #teaching #podcast #community

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. My weekly podcast, The PhD Life Coach covers the most common issues experienced in universities, including procrastination, imposter syndrome, and having too much to do. I give inspiring and actionable advice and often have fun expert guests join me on the show. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you already listen, please find time to rate, review and tell your friends!

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

#phd #academia #lecturer #professor #university #procrastination #overwhelm #amwriting #writing #impostersyndrome #timemanagement #support #coaching #highereducation #research #teaching #podcast #community

Transcript

I used to say that if only I had a personal assistant, I would be the most efficient academic in the world. Have you ever watched Suits? I wanted a Donna, the wonderful Donna, Harvey's amazing personal assistant who always had the things he needed right there, who kind of protected him from the worst aspects of himself and made sure that all the things he did worked brilliantly. I needed a Donna. Now, I reached professor in the UK, but I never took on any of the roles where you ended up getting a personal assistant. So like head of department and things like that in the UK, you might get access to a personal assistant. All the leadership roles I did didn't reach that level of support. And so I never really experienced what that would be like. And to be honest, most of you probably don't have access to a personal assistant either, as nice as that would be, but even just recognizing that would be useful can give us some guidance about what we can provide for ourselves. So whenever we're thinking about what we wish we had, we can start thinking about how can we incorporate some of those elements into our lives now. So today we're going to be thinking about how you can be your own best personal assistant. 

Hello, and welcome to episode 39 of season two of the PhD life coach. And we are talking about how to be your own best personal assistant. First of all, we should probably define what we mean by this. And for those of you who listened to the podcast before, separate it from this notion of boss mode and implementer mode that we've talked about.

So boss mode is where we're making. strategic decisions. We're sort of separating ourselves from the minutiae of day to day. We're planning what we're doing, we're prioritizing, we're deciding on what our focus is, we're scheduling important work, we're time blocking, we're reminding ourselves why we're doing what we're doing. And hopefully, if you've been listening to my podcast for a while, we're also setting the intentional thoughts that we want to think, as well as the intentional actions that we want to take. Now, if that sounds like something you don't know about yet, that's fine. No worries. There are several episodes where I talk about this stuff and I'll link some of them in the show notes for you. It's also something I teach in my How To Be Your Own Best Boss program, which is running at the moment. We're entering into the last month of the three month program, which has been amazing. I will be running that again in the autumn, so if it feels like all this stuff is something that you would like more support with, make sure you're on my newsletter, so that you're the first to hear when registration for that starts. 

Anyway, so that's boss mode. Then there's implementer mode. That's the version of us that gets on and does stuff. We're the ones that read the articles. We're the ones that write the papers. We're the ones that design and do the teaching. The implementer is the one that actually gets on and does it. 

So how is personal assistant different? Well, personal assistant is all about how do we make it easier for the boss? And for the implementer to do their jobs. How do we make it tidier? More organized? More pleasant? More efficient? Okay, the personal assistant does the kind of operation stuff that makes things run more smoothly. So I mentioned Donna from Suits at the beginning. If you don't know that show, not a problem, I'm sure there are other versions of a kind of supportive assistant that you can think of. When I'm not envisaging Donna looking after me, I often envisage somebody who's maybe a bit older, who's known me since I was really young, who's a little bit firm and maybe a tiny bit stern, but who I know loves me deeply and really understands me and wants the best for me.

You can decide what sort of vibe works best for you, but your role is to make it easier for the other two roles. The other thing that the boss and the personal assistant have in common is that we work with the you that usually shows up for work. So often when we're in boss mode, we plan for a version of us that has to be perfect and has to do exactly what we say and has to turn up perfectly on time and organized and ahead of themselves and all of these things. And to be honest, for most of us, that's not real.

So when we're in boss mode, we often talk about how we need to plan and strategize for the implementer that we actually are, the person who usually shows up and the same is true in personal assistant mode. So for example, any personal assistant of mine will need to understand things like I get really distracted by new and exciting ideas and want to run off down those rabbit holes. I'm getting better at not doing that every time. Okay. But that's still a tendency. I have a tendency not to put things away, so they know and work with these types of tendencies, rather than things only working if you turn up as your perfect self. And I'll talk as we go through, as we talk about different tasks that you could ask this personal assistant of yours, i. e. you in personal assistant mode, to do when we think about what those tasks are. I'll give you ideas as we go through how you can make those tailored to the real you and understanding of how you usually show up.

But first I want to think about why this is even desirable. So for me, the benefit here is that it makes everything else work better. It means that when I'm in a writing block, I'm ready for that writing block and I've got the things I need. When I'm in operations role, I know what tasks I need to do and I feel like I've got sufficient time to do that. It means I'm working in an environment that's nice to work in and it is [00:06:00] undistracting as I can make it.

Why is pretending that you're your own personal assistant different than just doing this stuff as one of your tasks? For me, it's just a different mindset. It's a separate thing to think, how could I make this easier for myself and do those tasks than it is from actually doing the tasks. And in reality, we often get bogged down in doing the tasks. How many of you, and I know I'm guilty of this still, how many of you have got items on your to do list that are things like sort out the files for whatever that just never come to the top of your list because you've got so many other things that feel more important and feel more pressing. Those are the sorts of tasks, as you'll hear in a second, that your personal assistant version of you could do in personal assistant time. And that then brings them to the top of the to do list. So those are some of the benefits that I see. But let's get specific. What tasks are we going to give this personal assistant? 

Now I already had a bunch of ideas about this, but I also did a little bit of research and how I did it was I looked on websites for people who were offering actual personal assistant or virtual assistant roles. So working in a business like mine, at some point I may appoint somebody to help me with all of these things and to do it for me and a really good way to come up with ideas about what we could do for ourselves in personal assistant mate and to look at what they would do for us if we were employing somebody to do this.

So I've come up with 10 things that you could do for yourself when you are in personal assistant mode that will make the rest of your academic life feel easier. As usual, you know me, might add things as I go along, might not end up being 10, we'll see, but it started out as 10 anyway. So the first one is, if we spend time at the beginning of the week planning our time in boss mode, which I would really recommend that you do. If you haven't already listened to my how to plan your week session, where I talk to an ex client, Marie, about how she plans her weeks, do go back and check that one out. It will really explain to you how that boss mode start of the week happens. But for now, just imagine you're starting the week in boss mode, making strategic decisions about what things you need to do this week and when you're going to do those major roles. Your personal assistant time might come just after that, where you actually go in and you really specifically check, have I actually left gaps between things. Have we actually left time to eat? Are we finishing at times when we want to, that are kind of in line with the skeleton calendar that we've come up with, i. e. our kind of rough approximation of what we want a week to look like. 

Now, if in boss mode, you can be compassionate and think about all these things too, Brilliant. But often we still find that we don't. And so I find it quite useful to switch myself into personal assistant mode and just double check that those things have been done. 

Where I've got friends who have become heads of department, heads of college, pro vice chancellors, those sorts of people, who do have personal assistants, one of the things that they have found most useful is how much their personal assistant defends their diary. All of us have had these situations, and this is maybe more relevant for the academic listeners rather than for the PhD students, but all of us have had those situations where we're blocked in time for writing or reading or something like that, and then somebody's asked for an appointment and you've kind of gone, oh, I don't have any other slots, but yes, okay, I can meet at this time, and you just kind of wipe out your block. Or you wipe out your lunch, or the break you were going to have, or the walk that you'd scheduled, just because somebody else was having an emergency. And one of the things that I've heard people reflect a lot of times is that personal assistants are really good at saying, no, no, no, you need that block. If there's no time, they'll have to wait till next week, or they'll have to wait, I'll schedule in slot in future, which is for emergency conversations. I'll put that in your diary, but this week it's going to have to wait till next week. We can do that for ourselves. Just double checking that when we're in boss mode, we didn't get overexcited and plan too much.

The second thing a personal assistant can do is notice when you've got a writing block coming up. So say you've planned, this comes out on a Monday, maybe you've planned on a Tuesday morning, you're going to do two hours of writing. You can look ahead as personal assistant and say, how can I make this easier for implementer me to do? Examples are things like, can I make sure that there are some really clear instructions as to exactly which bit you're writing? Can I make sure, maybe put a folder on the desktop that's got the three articles that might be useful during this? Now, do go back to my episode from a couple of weeks ago about why you shouldn't read during a writing session. But you might decide that there's one or two bits of notes or one particular article that you want to have just to check quick things. Okay, how can you make sure that those things are there? How can you make sure that you're going to avoid distractions? Do you want to think about changing location, working somewhere away from where you usually work? Is there anybody you need to tell and put on Do Not Disturb so that you don't get interrupted during this time? Could you even go as far as like filling up a water jug? That's something my husband does for me sometimes and I love it. He fills up a water jug so that I've got water on my desk when I'm gonna work. Can you think about things like that? Can you book in a walk in the diary immediately after the block so that once they've got their writing done they can go and have a little walk and decompress? And I'm still talking about they as though it's somebody else But I'm talking about us. I'm talking about the personal assistant, us, thinking about the future us that's going to be doing that writing block, and thinking about how can I make it easier. As you do it, you'll get [00:12:00] better at this as well. Just as if I was going to appoint a personal assistant or a virtual assistant, they would slowly get to know me and what's helpful and what things would really speed me up. As you start doing this, you'll start to notice then, Oh, it would have been really useful if I'd done this before this session started. And so you will get better. And so when you mindfully practice this, you will get better at being your own personal assistant.

The third thing is personal assistant might look at what meetings you've got coming up, and they might just double check. Have you actually got the Zoom link for them? Is it in the appointment on your Outlook? If you use a system like that, is the Zoom link right there where you can find it? Are there materials, are there other word files or whatever that should be attached to that document? Are you physically going somewhere? Do you know where that is? How are you doing? Get there where you can park or what public transport to get or what the walking route would be. Do you know what you need to wear if there's any restrictions around that sort of stuff? What can you do to make it so that when you come to that moment, you don't just go, Oh my God, I don't even know where the zoom link is, which is something that has definitely happened to me in the past and I'm sure the same is true for you. How can you make it really easy for them to show up to that meeting prepared with the things that we need? 

The fourth thing is about reading sessions. So if you've blocked in some time to read some literature, what could your personal assistant do that would be useful? Things like, could they file away your notes. So they're actually properly labeled and somewhere that you can find them next time. Have you found more PDFs and downloaded them? And they've all got those stupid names that when you download them, just make no sense at all. Could your personal, personal assistant rename them for you in something that actually makes sense and put them somewhere you can find them next time.

By the way, this is where I'm going to ask you guys is knowledge. See whether you guys have got more insight than me. If somebody could invent an AI assistant that goes into a folder of PDFs, opens one of them, gets the name of the author, the date, and the title, and then saves the PDF as author, date, title, I would literally give them all my money. I mean, I wouldn't, but somebody, if that does that exist. If you already know that exists, if there's a way I can dump a load of files into an AI thing, tell it what format I want the file names to be, and it does it for me, that would be amazing. If not, computer scientists get onto it. That would be amazing. I hate the stupid titles you get when you download PDFs. But anyway, I digress. 

At the moment, that's just a job that as personal assistant, we can do for ourselves. For example, last night I had a big CPD file on various topics because I love to stay up to date on the research side of being an effective researcher, whether that's being an effective supervisor for my supervisor training course that I offer, whether it's the literature behind self regulation, procrastination, I try and stay on top of those sorts of things. I find it fascinating, and I think it's really important that I practice evidence based support as well as you guys. Anyway, so I have these big files. They're all things that I've downloaded loads of. Some of you kindly download them for me because the downside of being a, independent business is that I don't have access to the libraries that you guys do. So my various listeners and clients and things often download things for me. Thank you, my lovelies. And I end up with this huge folder. Anyway, I spent a little bit of time in personal assistant mode. My personal assistant was very relaxed last night because we did it in front some very drivel dating program that I found on TV, bit of junk on the telly, renaming my files. It was fine. I had the telly to watch, not a problem. Wasn't too boring. Was quite easy to go. Got my little boost from feeling like I was organized. And today I feel very looked after because my personal assistant worked hard last night and I now have a beautiful folder of labeled articles where I can actually find the things I want when I'm designing new workshops, which I am at the moment. So that's another sort of thing you can do.

The fifth thing that I think personal assistants can do is think proactively about what meetings might be useful. So we've already discussed how if there's a meeting already in your diary, they can help you be ready for it and organized for it. But what about meetings that you haven't yet decided that you need? Taking a moment to actually stop and go, Who would it be useful to catch up with right now? Who haven't I spoken to for a while? Who could I pick their brain? Who could I inform or keep interested in what I'm doing? And how can I get those scheduled in?

Spending just a little bit of time sending out some messages, trying to get those things booked in, can be a really helpful way of organizing things. It's always easier to get meetings in the diary in two or three weeks time than it is urgently now. So a personal assistant who can think slightly ahead and be like, Oh, I haven't seen my second supervisor for a while. I'm not quite sure what I need just yet, but in a couple of weeks, it would be brilliant to have a meeting, tell them what I've been doing, double check. Get that booked in. Use your personal assistant time to get those sorts of things booked. I've started doing it with haircuts. Now, my organized listeners, you are going to laugh at me because this should not be a revelation on any level, but with things like haircuts and dentists and all that kind of repeated stuff, I've had a habit forever that I eventually book it, I go, and then I don't do anything else, I've been, fine. And then, however long later, I'm like, Oh god, I really need to book a hair appointment, and then I don't go round to it, I don't phone them, da da da, and then it just takes longer. I've started at the end of my hair appointment, just booking the next one. And I know you, at least half of you, are rolling your eyes that this is not rocket science. But for me, this is making a big difference. When I turn my diary like, Oh, I've got a haircut book this week. How [00:18:00] organized am I? Brilliant. So, if anyone, you know, do that too. But you can do this with all your academic work as well. What would be useful to have booked in already?

Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful.

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The sixth way they can help is another being proactive task. And here is thinking about what regularly wastes you time. What do you regularly lose? What do you regularly struggle with? What regularly just uses up way more time than it should? So where don't you know your passwords? Where can't you find your files? Where do you find yourself reinventing the wheel? So some examples here are things like I've got much more... I've spent a little bit of time in personal assistant mode, sorting out all the handouts for my different courses. So that my, my notes, the handouts that I give to the people after they've attended, the PowerPoint slides, if I have them for the various workshops that I run, I can now go and be like, Oh, there's my how to make decisions and prioritize course, and I've got all the bits I need right there. Might not feel very revelationary for you, but often I was re downloading those from places and pulling them together, and now they're all just there, which makes implementing this stuff so much easier. What wastes time for you? Where could you make some of these things simpler for yourself?

Another one that I haven't done too much yet, but I've had colleagues who've done this in the past and found it really useful, is writing auto replies for things that you get often. So if you get regular emails where similar types of things need to be said, can you pre write that text, and then be able to just either cut and paste it in or have it on one of those auto text things that you can do in most email software so that it's ready to go. I remember one of my very organized friends, shout out Professor Jenn Cumming, who's been on the show before, when she stopped being project module supervisor, so she used to oversee our dissertation module years and years ago. Um, she handed on like all the emails you needed for different times of the year when you told the students how this worked and when to hand that in and reminders about this that and the other and finding out when you know starting the marking process and all these things she had like just a bank of emails that she was able to give the next person and the dates that they needed to be sent and it was just like legendary. How could you do those sorts of things to just make some of your routine processes a little bit easier?

Now the seventh one's going to sound a bit of a strange one. This is sorting your email, processing your email, because I think it's really useful to separate out processing your email from doing the tasks in your emails. So if you're in personal assistant mode, you can go into your emails, you can delete anything that's junk and unsubscribe - apart from from my newsletters don't unsubscribe from those -so you can unsubscribe from anything you don't want anymore, you can file away anything that you want to keep look at later, you can mark as spam anything that's found please don't mark my newsletters as spam they're not you can just unsubscribe if you don't want them anymore um you can, as personal assistant, you can answer quick ones. So it's just, you know, where's the zoom link for this webinar? Oh, I can do that one. Do, do, do, boom, gone. So if they're quick and easy and don't really need the implementer version of you to do them, you can just do them. You can flag ones maybe, that are bigger tasks, but that are time sensitive and others you can take and put on your to do list. Now, whether you then leave it in your inbox or put it somewhere else is up to you and your systems, but really flagging which ones need doing it urgently and turning them into tasks can really help keep you on track. Because one of the things I see, and I fall foul of this as much as anybody, is that we have a to do list, but we also sort of have a to do list in our emails as well, things where people have asked us stuff that we need to do, and often we don't reconcile the two. And if we don't, we end up at the end of the week feeling like we didn't do any of the things on our tasks. It's a task list, but we were definitely busy. So what were we doing? So your, what your personal assistant can do is deal with the easy stuff and then put the more complex stuff, the stuff that takes more than a few minutes to answer actually into your task list so that you can allow for it when you're planning and so that you know when you're going to do it. If you use my role based time blocking system, check out the episode on that if you haven't seen it already. Then when you're taking them from your email, you can allocate them to a role. This is a marketing job, this is an operations job, or whatever it is for you. 

The eighth one is a fun one. And this is your personal assistant can make things beautiful for you. So all of us, whatever level we're at, will sometimes make presentations, for example, whether it's for conferences or teaching, uh, we'll be formatting documents to send to people, all of these things. And it's easy to get bogged down in making them beautiful. What I would really suggest is that you separate out what [00:24:00] are jobs for the implementer you, and what are jobs for personal assistant you.

And for me, the implementer does content. Your boss decides, aka you when you're in boss mode, decides that you're going to do this presentation and what the point of doing the presentation is, you know, what's the strategic value that you're going to get out of doing it. So the boss decides those things.

The implementer is the one who has to decide on the content. He has to decide, what am I going to say? When am I going to say it? On what slides? What's the key points here? What's the take home message? All that good stuff. And actually make that stuff exist. That's implementer's job. Implementer's job, by the way, is not to second guess boss. Implementer's job is not saying, maybe we shouldn't do this. I don't think this is a good idea. Implementer's job is to do what the boss has asked them. But, Implementer's job is not finding the perfect picture to illustrate a point you want to make. That's your personal assistant's job. And if you can separate this stuff out, it will stop you disappearing down these rabbit holes of wasting ages making things look fancy during blocks when your intention was to create content. And what you can do, therefore, is you can block time. Okay, I've got three hours this morning to write this presentation. That is not picking color schemes. That is not making designs. That is certainly not finding photos. That is, on this slide, I need to say these things. On this slide, I need to say these things. Here's my data. Here's my conclusions. Whatever. Okay? It's getting that stuff done. You can then block an hour in some period of the day, for me, it's often like late afternoon, but whatever time of day you feel is a sort of low time for you to make it beautiful. And now you've got an hour to make it as beautiful as you can. And at that point, yes, your personal assistant might correct typos and things like that as they go along, but your job's not to second guess the content, your job is just to make it presentable. Now, if we think back to the proactivity, if your personal assistant's got a bit of spare time, they might make a slide deck where it's all, you know, it's got the right colors, it's got the layouts, da da da, that can always be used. So you're not reinventing this every time. In fact, some of your universities will have standard ones, and maybe your personal assistant will find those for you, so you've got them. By separating it out, same as with not reading during a writing session, we're not beautifying our slides during a slide creation session, separating it out makes it way better. 

The ninth thing and I've left this towards the end because it kind of in the week comes towards the end, personal assistant can reconcile your task lists. And what I mean by reconcile your task list is actually go through your tasks, tick off the things that you have done, add anything that's come up since you last looked at your task list, and just make sure that you know what's going on. I used to get myself really stressed. I'd be like, Oh my God, I need to do this. I've got so many things on my list. Look at all of these. And then I go through it and be like, hang on. I've done that one. I've done that one. I've done that one. And it'd be like, once I crossed off the things that I had done, or even found that I had the same task on my list four times, cause my brain kept reminding me I needed to do it. So I'd add it to my list and then be like, hang on, your list is artificially inflated with repeated tasks here. Maybe that's just me, but spending time actually reckons like moving things you've done onto your done list. And if you don't remember about the done list, there's an episode on that too, uh, moving that onto your done list and then. Knowing exactly where you're at. During that time, you can also check any statistics you want to keep track of. So, I keep track of things like how many people I have on my newsletter, um, income. That's always a nice one. Uh, things like that. You might keep track of how many words you write a week, for example. 

In that end of week, when you're reconciling the task list, your personal assistant can also look ahead and go, what have we got coming up next week? Just checking. Now, it's not for you to make decisions. That goes into kind of boss mode, but you then make it easy for you to have some boss mode time. So when you start on a Monday morning, you're like, right, I've got a reconciled task list. I've got a tidy desk. I know what's coming up in my diary. I can make some decisions about what I'm doing when, what I'm going to prioritize, what's going to get delayed. You make it easy. When I was first started doing these sort of Monday morning meetings where I was checking in with myself, I was doing this all at once and I was finding that I was using some of my best time on a Monday morning on really mundane, oh, how many Instagram followers have I got or whatever all that stuff. And so what I'm really trying to do now is separate that out, have my personal assistant Me, on a Friday afternoon, do as much of the kind of mundane checking out of things so that on a Monday morning, I can be in strategic mode and actually get straight to making decisions.

The other thing Friday me is trying to do is just tidy up my desk, get rid of my Diet Coke cans, empty the bin, all of those things. If you ever get a real PA, you probably don't expect them to clear up your junk. But when we're our own PA, we can ask them to do those things. 

Finally, you can also make a decision about whether this PA that you're being to yourself only exists in your work life and only does work things. Or, whether they also are part of your personal life as well. I like to think of them as part of my whole life, because I think it's the easiest way to kind of keep on top of things. And so if you're having a sort of a personal assistant, who is also a domestic personal assistant, you can think about things like, okay, I've noticed that I've got a really busy week next week, where I've got lots of coaching, I've got lots of sessions, whatever. I'm going to make sure there's some food in the fridge that's really easy to cook. This is not, by the way, the time to get super overambitious and decide that you're going to do food prep a la Instagram gurus and whatnot, just have stuff that's easy, that's roughly in line with what you want to be eating so that when you are trying to grab something in between sessions, it's vaguely nutritious, vaguely in line with the sorts of things you intend to eat and doesn't take too long.

You can also think about things like, are the clothes I [00:30:00] need for next week clean? Do I need to book any train tickets? Do I need to fill the car up? Are there any personal appointments, haircuts, dentists, things like that, that I need to book? They can do those things too. So you could even schedule some time on a weekend that you spend in personal assistant mode. 

So those are 10 things that I think you can do when you put yourself in your own personal assistant role that will make the rest of your time so much easier. As I said, it might sound weird because you might just say, these are just tasks, Vikki. These are things that I could just put on my to do list and do, but I would encourage you to block time as personal assistant. Create a role, personal assistant, where your priority is doing these things so they don't get pushed out.

I also find that by characterizing it as a role, it makes it easier to get on and do. As you all know, I may or may not have ADHD, who knows, maybe this is a neurodiverse thing, maybe my neurotypical audience will think this is strange. Often I find things that work for people who are neurodiverse actually often work for people who are neurotypical too. You just may be less dependent on them. But one of the things I find is when I put myself in personal assistant mode and I think about it like that, I find the tasks easier to do. Those of you who follow me on Twitter, I'm at Dr Vikki Burns, might have seen me post this week that I was looking after my twin nieces this week. I, I go and see them before school 'cause their mom worked early one day and they had been told that they weren't allowed any device time, until they're tidied their bedrooms. And so my job was to help them finish tidying their bedroom before they go ready for school and everything. And I'm not the world's most tidy person. Anyone who's met me, you probably know this. And often I get overwhelmed when I'm tidying up my own thing, unless I really use my own coping strategies. And I found, I mean, I'm in a bedroom. It was a lot better to be fair, but it's still slightly chaotic twin 7 year olds bedroom. And I was going, right, let's just find all the hair things, headbands, hair clips, all that stuff. Let's find all of those, we'll put in this box. Now let's find all the cuddly toys and we can put them on your beds. Okay. And I found it so easy to break it down into specific let's just do this one thing. Okay, we're done. And there was something about the fact that I was doing it for and with them that made it enormously easier than when I do these things for myself. Like I say, might be a neurodiverse thing. But I think the same comes true with personal assistant. When you put yourself in personal assistant mode, it's easier to go, Oh, okay, how can I make this nice? How can I make this good? In a way that we often don't bother to do when we're just in our own task list. 

If you're thinking, this is all very well Vikki, but I don't have time to do the other things, let alone have time to put in my diary that I'm going to tidy up my desk. I would just really encourage you to reflect. I would really encourage you to think, if I just put 30 minutes 15 minutes a day in my diary where I had this vibe where I was thinking, how can I make it easier for myself? What difference would that make to my productivity in the rest of the week? I feel like investing half an hour to make sure that you've got the things you need for your writing session. That your reading session wasn't a waste of time. That you know what's coming up in your diary. That you are organizing the meeting details that you need. I think all of those things will make everything else more effective.

I also think, and this is a bonus for you because you guys know that I really emphasize compassion and a kind of building a relationship between you and your future self. I also think this is part of generating a positive relationship with your future self. Often, we blame past us for making bad decisions and not doing the things that we think they should have done and we almost believe that future us is like, Perfect and amazing. And we'll get everything done, which kind of lets present us off the hook.

It's like, Oh, I'll just do it tomorrow. I'll be able to do it tomorrow. No problems. Where actually, if we can get to a stage where we really practice thinking about what will make things better for future us, then we're so much more likely to do the difficult things now, to do the boring things now, do the non urgent but really helpful things now. So actually, I think not only will you be getting these personal assistant tasks done, you'll be nurturing a relationship between you and your future self that will change how you relate to yourself the rest of the time. And this is where for all that I would love to have a real life personal assistant that I can delegate some things to, I actually think that learning to be my own personal assistant is making me better at being an implementer, it's making me better at being a boss, and it's making it easier to do the things that I'm intending to do.

So I'm still practicing this. It's a work in progress. It's something that I sometimes spend time doing and sometimes don't, but I noticed that things feel much better when I do. And when I noticed that I haven't been, I try and nudge myself back to it. So have a think about how you can practice this. 

If you want some more support, my newsletter is going to have some summaries of what I've said today, and it's going to have some specific journal prompts and actions that you can take to help you really embed this stuff in your life. So make sure that you sign up for that. I'd love to hear what things, have I missed any tasks that your personal assistant version of yourself can do for yourself? Is there anything you've tried and found really useful that I haven't thought of and talked about today? Let me know. Get on my [00:36:00] newsletter list, drop me a message, and who knows, maybe I'll include it in a future podcast. If you've got questions, things you're unclear on, or topics that you think I should cover, make sure you let me know. I can always do future podcasts on your topics and questions. I really hope you found today useful. It's something that's helped me enormously. Thank you all so much for listening and I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.

com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.