17. Why you should never cross things off your to do list and what you should do instead

In this episode I talk about the way PhD students and academics spend so much time looking what they need to do next that they forget to recognise what they've done. I introduce the "well done list" and show you how it can help you build confidence and productivity. 

To find out more about working with me, check out www.thephdlifecoach.com/work-with-me

****
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. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

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.

Transcript

Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 17 of the PhD Life Coach. I want you to think about your to-do list. Maybe while you're listening to this, you can see it in front of you. Maybe it's at home. Is it on a piece of paper? Is it on your computer? I want you to really visualize your to-do list, and I want you to think about what you do when you complete a task.

Do you cross it out? Do you delete it? What happens to those tasks when they've been completed? 

In today's episode, I'm going to talk about why you shouldn't be crossing them off and what I think you should do instead. But I want to start by telling you a little bit of some of the things I see when I'm coaching PhD students and academics. 

I coach everybody from PhD students through to full professors, and I've really noticed some patterns recently in the things that people are talking about. So the first thing I've really noticed is people struggling with their confidence, feeling that they're not good enough to be at the level they're at, and believing that when they get the next thing, they'll feel better. 

So whatever stage people are at, they seem to believe that when they finish their PhD or when they get their first published article, or when they get their first grant or their first job, or their first permanent job, whatever level it is for you, that they will feel more confident and feel like they deserve the place they have.

But what's fascinating when you coach such a range of people, as I do, is I see this at every level. So I have my PhD student saying, I'll feel better once I've got a job. I'll be more confident then because I'll know I'm good at what I do. But my people who are early career are looking at the next people and saying, yeah, but I haven't got a permanent job, I haven’t got a tenure track job.

Then the people that have got permanent jobs are going “Yeah. But I'll feel better once I've got senior lecturer or associate professor. I'll feel better when I've got full professor”, and then I've got clients who are full professors who still lack confidence in big chunks of the work that they do.

The flip side of that is I often notice that the very same clients who think they'll feel better when they reach the next stage, also have a complete disregard for things they've achieved already.

So when I ask them what their goals used to be, to imagine a time when they were dreaming of being on a PhD program, or a time when they were dreaming of having their first research job, they often struggle to take themselves back to that. They often downplay the achievement, so they'll say, “oh yeah, I got my PhD, but you know, I scrabbled through. I dunno how it happened. Yeah, it was a bit of a nightmare, but I got there in the end. Anyway. I'll feel better, more confident once I've got a permanent job.”

Or instead of downplaying what they've done, they just don't even think about it at all. You know, when I ask them about it, it's the first time that they've stopped thought about all the things that they've achieved up until now. 

Now this is something that is talked about in a book called The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy.

I recommend having a look at it, not necessarily reading the entire book, but I really like some of the ideas in this book. What they talk about is how we often focus on the gap between where we are now and where we want to get to, rather than thinking about the gain i.e. the difference between where we are now and where we were previously.

Because this is what I see. It's almost like these academics are on a treadmill where they're only ever looking forwards. They're sort of marching along towards the next goal where they feel that they'll feel happy and they'll feel confident and settled. But as soon as they get, as soon as they get there, the goalposts move.

Do you have goalposts on, on a treadmill? Who knows? Go with it. Probably not. But they're going along and they get to the next milestone and they just keep going. Because now they've got that one, they want the next milestone.

And it means at no point do they reach this marvellous land where they feel confident and secure in their abilities. And it's just really sad to see because people genuinely believe it'll be better when they get there. And I know people who are there and they're not. 

It made me think about climbing a hill. Now I love hiking. I love that feeling of being out in the countryside, climbing up a hill, figuring out the way, sort of pushing yourself, but enjoying the fresh air and the challenge. And one of the best things about climbing a hill is always the view and not just the view from the top, but the view on the way up. 

And so one of the things I used to love to do when I was hiking was decide it was time for a little sandwich break and sit on a rock facing the way we came, eat my sandwiches, and look out to see how far we've come. And the car park, wherever you started, always looks so far away and you can get a real sense of satisfaction from sitting and resting and just going “I walked all the way up here. Check me out. That's cool.” 

And it struck me that what a lot of my clients, a lot of the people that I see on social media are doing is they're never turning around to look at the view. They're just looking at the next peak. So they're just looking at the hill, just gotta keep going. “I'll feel better when I'm at the top. Keep going. I'll feel better when I'm at the top. Keep going.”

And then when they get to the top, and if those of you who have hiked might have experienced this, sometimes you get to the bit that you think's the top and then you see another peak rising in front of you and you realize actually you've just reached a bit of a ridge, a bump on the way.

And that's what's happening with my clients is they get to the next peak and they thought it was the peak where they were going to feel satisfied, but actually they just see ahead of them, there's more mountain and they keep going. And so now they're like, “Ugh, right, gotta climb that bit now let's go. Come on, let's go.” And they just focus on what needs to come next. 

So when you are climbing towards your next peak, I want you to remember to turn around and enjoy the view from where you are at the moment. Because you've come a really long way, and I am willing to bet that you spend far more time thinking about how far you have to go than thinking about where you are and how far you've come.

And this is what takes me back to the to-do list. So the title of this episode is Why You Should Never Cross Things Off Your To-Do List and What to Do Instead. The problem with crossing things off your to-do list is you get momentary satisfaction of crossing it off and then it's gone.

You are now only looking at the tasks that are still on your to-do list. You've literally crossed out the thing that you've done. I bet at the beginning when I asked you to think about your to-do list, you couldn't tell me what the crossed out things were. In fact, when I've asked people to do this and actually show me their to-do list, often they can't even read their crossed out things because they scribbled them out so hard or they actually deleted them out of their to-do list system online.

And this really emphasizes this kind of treadmill approach of, “okay, done that. What's next? Okay, done that. What's next?” And doesn't give us that moment of actually enjoying where we are. 

Why is that so important? Because otherwise the treadmill becomes thankless. At no point do you feel confident because you're still just looking at this gap between where you are and where you should be.

And at no point do you say, well done, or congratulations to yourself because you're still short of where you want to be. If we go back to my very first episode where I talked about being your own best supervisor and thinking about your inner voice as essentially your boss. If you had a boss that never said “well done” for the things you've got done, it wouldn't be a very fun place to work. If the second you told them you'd finished a task. They just gave you another task and completely forgot the things that you'd done. It wouldn't feel good. It wouldn't feel like a nurturing place to work yet. That's what we do to ourselves. all the time. 

So what should you do instead? You may have heard of an idea called the Done List, and this is where instead of writing down all the things that you have to do, you write down the things that you've done. Now, I like it to go alongside a to-do list. I still find the to-do useful, but a Done List helps you reflect at the end of the day, at the end of the week on what things you actually have done.

The other reason this is useful is because often we end up doing a bunch of stuff that never made it onto our to-do list in the first place. Someone comes into your office and asks you something, somebody's broken something in the lab and you go fix it, whatever it might be, that kind of reactive stuff that we all end up doing. It never even makes it onto a list, let alone get crossed out, and then you forget that you've done it and you suddenly get to Friday and you go, hang on, how's this? Where is this week gone? I don't understand what I've done because you haven't made any record of what you've done. And that's where the done list comes in.

But we're not going to stop with a done list. People have talked about a done list before. I have another step for you. I want you to make it your Well Done List. So we are not just going to list what you've done because sure, that can help you. That can sort of be a reflection of the tasks that you've achieved.

But we are not just our behaviours. We want to actually generate a feeling. And if we're going to generate a feeling, a feeling of confidence, a feeling of pride, then we need to think about what we're thinking. A

And so on your well done list, I want you to write:

-        I am so pleased I got that abstract written.

-        I'm really proud of myself for responding to those reviewers comments. 

-        I'm so glad I got my personal development review paperwork finished. 

-        I'm so glad I figured out where my statistics were going wrong. 

So you are really writing not just what you did, but that you are proud of yourself. You are pleased with yourself that you got it done.

You are really trying to instil a habit of congratulating yourself for the things that you do. You could even be more specific, not just con sort of empty congratulations. You could even say: 

-        I'm so pleased that I stuck with that because I was struggling to figure out what was going wrong in my syntax. But actually I stuck with it and I figured it out.

-        I'm so pleased I did that presentation because I was feeling quite scared beforehand, but I overcame that and did it anyway and I think it went quite well. 

So you can start to actually compliment the behaviours that enabled you to do the thing or the thoughts that enabled you to do the thing. So what you are really doing is you are encouraging your brain to pay attention to the things you've achieved. You are reminding your brain to be kind and compassionate and supportive about these things. 

If you had people working for you, who'd done some really good work, you’d tell them that and you'd hopefully tell them why you were so impressed.

Not just well done, but also I know that was hard for you and you got it done so I'm really chuffed with that Great job. Let's learn to say those things to ourselves. 

So I encourage you, have a little play with it this week. Have an experiment with starting a well done list where you congratulate yourself for the things you've got done.

I'm actually experimenting with this in my planner. Those of you who've been with me since the beginning will know that my second episode was about why you don't need another planner. But I succumbed and bought a beautiful planner. It's very lovely and if I stick to it the way I am at the moment, I'm going to tell you all about in a future podcast, how I'm using my planner as a well done list.

But in the meantime, just grab a piece of paper and start your well done list for this week. Let's start focusing on being pleased with how much we have done rather than beating ourselves up for where we are next. It will improve your present day by changing your mood in the moment, but I also believe it will improve your productivity.

If you know that this isn't a thankless task, that when you get this done, you are going to be really nice to yourself, you are much more likely to say, “Ooh, I'll just get this bit done too. Oh yeah, I can just finish that off because then I can write it on my well done list.” So really use it as a way to cheer yourself along and achieve the goals you've set for this week.

Let me know on Twitter how you get on with it. I would love to hear some of the things that you write on your well done list. You can find me as usual @drvikkiburns, the PhD Life Coach. Let me know how you get on and give yourself lots of credit for everything you get done this week.