2.31 How to get back into work after a break

It's that time of year when academics and PhD students are coming back after Easter/Spring break and trying to get back into the swing of uni life. Whether you spent the holiday having a "real" break, catching up on work you wanted to do, organising work you wish you didn't have to do, or just procrastinating, this is the episode for you. We'll think about why feeling the dread makes it hard to get going and what you can do instead. Let's start the new term as we mean to go on! 

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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

They say in podcasting talk about what you know. Today, when I'm recording this, it is the 14th of April. I have just had the last week mostly off work, apart from a few group sessions. Um, my stepdaughters were here over the Easter break, which was wonderful and I start back at work properly again tomorrow, the day this podcast is due out.

And I've just realized I hadn't recorded a podcast or posted it ready to go out. And so here I am, on a Sunday afternoon, recording you a podcast. 

And so I thought, what better to talk about than how to get back to work after a break, because I've got to do it right now.

Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach where we help you get less overwhelmed, stop beating yourself up and start living the life you want. I'm your host Dr Vicki Burns, ex professor and Certified Life Coach. Whether you're a brand new PhD student or an experienced academic, I'm here to show you that thriving in academia can be a whole lot easier than it feels right now.

Let's go.

Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 31 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. I don't know about you, but I find the time after a break a really strange time. Because part of me has all these great ideas about how I'm going to be, you know, more organized and things I'm going to do and how, you know, new start, fresh beginnings, all that stuff. And part of me is a bit like, Oh, I really enjoyed not having quite as much work to do over the holidays.

Now I don't have it quite as much now running my own business, but certainly in academia, when I had time off, that feeling that everything had been piling up while I was away and that I was now having to get back and face it and maybe do some of those things that I had put off till after the holidays, was often quite a big sort of, I won't go quite as far as dread for some of you it might feel like dread, but certainly feeling a bit ominous and a bit anticipating the struggles.

So in this session, I really want to think about what makes coming back after a break feel more difficult and how we can navigate it with a little more ease and a little more fun. One of the biggest issues that I see in myself and in the clients that I worked with and a lot of the academics and PhD students I've spent time with over the years is all the stories we tell ourselves as we start coming back after a break. I am going to guess, whether you're coming back after a break now or whether you just had the Easter weekend or whatever it was, I'm gonna guess that you have a bunch of thoughts about you in the break itself. Maybe you're thinking that you hadn't intended to work and you ended up doing some work and you kind of feel like you wasted the break now. Maybe you had intended to do some work and you ended up doing more or less than you intended and you're frustrated you didn't stick to your plans.

Maybe you'd set yourself a goal to get something really big done over the holidays and ended up not doing it and now you're annoyed that you are, in inverted commas, behind. What's true for you? Which of those do you recognize the most? I've experienced pretty much all of them at different times over the holidays, but one of the problems when we look back over things we've done with regret is it can be a really wasted emotion. There's nothing we can do about how we spent the holiday. Sure, we can spend some time reflecting and think about how we would want to learn from this experience in the future, and I will talk about that.

But we can't change the amount of work that we did over the holidays. We can't change how much rest we had over the holidays, and the problem when we spend lots of time regretting it and beating ourselves up for the fact that we should have done it differently, we're now making the current time period difficult as well. So we've wasted time. if that's how we're going to conceptualize it during the holidays, either by working or by not working or whatever you think constitutes a waste of time.

And now we're wasting time worrying about the things we should have done then, at a point where we can't do anything about it. By worrying about time wasted then, we end up wasting time now.

And so I'd really encourage you to either get to positive. about your holidays, or at least to neutral. So whatever you did, I want you to find things you're grateful for. I'm really glad that I spent time doing X. I'm really glad that I kept Y ticking over. I'm really glad that I put Z down and didn't work on it, even though I had intended to. Actually, I think that was the right thing for me. I think that was what I needed. Being able to see and have gratitude for the things you did do puts you in a much better frame of mind to do the things you intend now.

It also reinforces to ourselves that we know ourselves and that we're able to act from our best intentions. And again, that can really help when we're thinking about what we want to be doing in this first week, this first two weeks back at work. Now you might be struggling. You might be thinking, yeah, there's nothing I'm grateful that I did because I've now got this massive pile of marking, or I've now got a chapter due to my supervisor and I haven't done any of it. 

First, I'd encourage you to really look for the things that you're grateful for. There's usually small things, at least, that you're able to find in there. But if you're really struggling with feeling positive about your holiday, I'd like to encourage you to at least aim for neutral.

A neutral thought might sound something like, Well, I did what I did, and we're where we are now. Okay? So it's not spending lots of time on regret. It's not faking a positive attitude about it, if you're really struggling to see anything positive in it at all. But it is accepting that it's in the past, and there's nothing we can do about it now. Well, I did what I did. That's it. I did what I did and now we move on. What do we do now? So really aim for at least neutral, if not positive. And you will find that from there, it's enormously easier to figure out what you want to do next. 

The same is true when we look back at the past us. The one that was before the holidays, the one that had all these good intentions and expectations for what we were going to do over the holiday and where we'd be at when we get back.

It's probably also the past version of you that has put a bunch of stuff on your to do list now. Do you do that? I used to do that a lot and I still do to some extent. That idea that, oh yeah, I'll get to that after the holidays. When I've had a good break, I'll be much more on it. I'll be ready for it by then.

I'll get to that after the holidays. And then you get to after the holidays and you're like, yeah, cheers to that. Thanks. Now I've actually got to do it. 

I want you to look back on that version of you with some compassion and understanding as well. Anyone working in academia at the end of the spring term is likely to be feeling completely exhausted, largely overwhelmed, mostly unappreciated, and desperately in need of some sort of break. Even if you're looking back and going, Oh my goodness, I should have done this earlier. I want you to have compassion for that version of you that didn't do it. They didn't not do it because they're lazy layabouts. They didn't do it because they were knackered and because they were doing 14 other things. And because maybe those times when they were lazing around wasting time, they were actually just emotionally and cognitively drained. It's okay. There were reasons you didn't do it before. Let's have some compassion for that version of ourselves, and focus instead on making it as easy as possible for this version, for present us, to do the things we need to do next.

Now, if there are specific things that you've learned, either from looking back at the things that the past you from the end of term put off, or specific things you learned about how you managed your holidays, then you can spend a little bit of time jotting them down so that when we get to summer, so that when we get to Christmas, you can really take those things into account when you're planning what you want to do next holiday, i. e. things where we can actually change it, where we can learn from this experience and be different in the future, jot those things down. But mostly we want to just focus on how we can make it as easy as possible for the us that now needs to start work and get back into what we're doing,

the next thing I want us to do is be really compassionate to the us that's coming back to work as well. So often we think we need to get back on track. We need to get back into it. And this really quite sort of. time urgent, dramatic sense that everything's chaos, we're really behind, and we need to get back on it again.

I want you to really manage your expectations in this period. It's not easy to go from a time where things were more flexible, where you were maybe doing bits of work, but where you didn't have the fun full on sort of university experience and back into that more intense experience. And if we can manage our expectations about exactly how much we're going to get done and exactly how on top of things we're going to get in the time available, then we can actually end the day feeling pleased with what we've done rather than frustrated that we didn't do more.

Your first day back, you are not going to be functioning completely at your peak. Your first day back, you probably are going to spend loads of time clearing emails, remembering where you were, organizing yourself again, and all that stuff counts as work. And that is okay. We don't have to expect ourselves to do everything in this first week. 

And to be honest, when we do expect ourselves to do everything in the first week back, it's often when we do less than if we'd had lower expectations of ourselves. Because when we put ourselves under pressure and we tell ourselves that nothing we do is good enough, that's when we end up procrastinating and that's when we end up sort of just doing faffy jobs rather than things that actually need doing. So I want you to really carefully manage your expectations, whether you started back last week or whether this is your first week back now, so that you can identify key priorities, work on those while breaking yourself gently back into the routine of working.

I'm going to give you three tips about ways to do that. The first is to make sure that you're breaking any of your jobs down into really achievable chunks. So do not make Clear Inbox a to do list, especially if you're an academic. So PhD students, it might not be quite so crazy out there for you. Academics, do not make Clear Inbox a single item on your to do list. Because it's way more than just one job. You are likely to have hundreds of emails. Some leftover from the end of term, some that have come in during this holiday period, and that is a big lot of jobs. Break these things down into smaller chunks.

I used to make myself like a little flow chart of, I'd write down how many emails I had at the moment. So it's like 542 emails. And then I'd make a little flow chart where it's like, I got down to 500. I got down to 470. I got down to 460 and then I'd tick them off as I went past them. So I could kind of keep track of where I was up to, and how I was clearing them. Another way to do it, especially if you use Outlook or something like that, you can cluster them by like last week or more than two weeks old or whatever. Be like, right, I'm going to clear the more than two weeks old emails. I'm going to clear the, this week emails. By the way, always clear the, this week emails first. Ones that are late, already late. There's only so much you can do about that. If you can get on top of the most recent ones, that'll get you back on track much more quickly. So, make sure you break your work down into chunks. And if you're never sure how to do that, particularly with some of the bigger tasks, like reading and writing, make sure you listen to last week's episode, because I talked about that in quite some detail last week.

The second thing I want you to do is make sure you're looking at your diary now for the next couple of weeks. Often we get caught up in what's absolutely urgent this week, clearing our inboxes and things that have to be done. This week, have a look ahead at least two weeks. Because what we don't want is to get to Sunday next week, and realize that there are things that have crept up on you for the Monday afterwards. So have a look ahead couple of weeks and see what are the things that are absolutely crucial that have to be done this week and plot time into your diaries now to do those. So have that sneaky peek look ahead. 

The third tip is that now is not the time for detailed planning. Often people come back after the holidays, and I'm fighting this urge myself, to think ahead for the new academic year and what I want to be doing differently in my business and things like that. And there can be this real sort of urge, especially with spring coming here in the Northern Hemisphere and sort of really this sense of renewal, the evenings are getting lighter, it can really drive this sense that we want to plan ahead and get everything organised and stuff.

Now that is really important work and it's work that we should be doing, but I would really encourage you not to try and do that work in your first week back. Partly, it's cognitively taxing work. It's stuff that really takes a lot of time and thought. And often we're not in that state of mind when we're coming back after a break, whether you've been working in your break or having a break break.

 planning can lead to procrastination and overwhelm. So sometimes we can spend so much time planning but what we're actually doing is putting off getting on with the things that we know we need to do. And once we've then got the plan, it can be really overwhelming, this idea of starting it. So a little bit like I talked about in one of my episodes about what to do when you have too much to do, is if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're coming back after a break and feeling like there's a thousand things to do, instead of planning everything, just pick one thing that definitely needs doing and get that thing done and organized. Pick one item from your to do list where there's a clear tangible output that does need doing in the short term and get that done before you start planning when you're going to do everything else. That way, you've almost taken like a big bite out of your to do list already. You've already gone right, and I've got that done. Boom. Let's go. And it generates that sense of you being someone who gets things done. You being competent, autonomous. You're choosing, you're cracking on and getting things done. And that can really help with motivation.

During all of this, I want you to be thinking about what I sometimes refer to as B plus work. The thing with academics, whether you're a PhD student or a full professor, is that we have been rewarded over the years for doing things really, really well. We like to go for the gold stars. We like everything shiny. We like to get complimented. You know, often people have perfectionist tendencies. I've had clients say, you know, Oh, I'll either do it properly or I'll not do it at all. Especially in this period where we are sort of trying to get back on top of the things we're doing, I want you to think where B plus work is good enough, where just getting it done, not even B plus, where passing is sufficient, where you just need to get things out to your system, where you just need to give quick feedback to somebody, where you just need to fill in a quick form, where there are things where you can just crack them out, get them off your desk.

Is it the best, most insightful thing you've ever done? No. Is it gone and out of the way so somebody else can work on it? Yes, yes it is. Let's do that. So really question these, Oh, I don't have time to do that well. Oh, I need to do that perfectly. And see whether there's ways that you can do B plus work just to get things moving this week.

When you're thinking about what to do, I also want you to be planning for your current energy levels. Now, the reality is that if we're coming back after a period away from work, we often don't have quite the same stamina for working all day that we normally do. And we have two ways that we can deal with that.

Either, we can ignore it, pretend it's not true, and then have days where we get really frustrated about the fact that we haven't worked a full day the way we normally would be able to, or that we're more tired than usual in the afternoon and then beat ourselves up about it and be cross that we didn't get more done, or we can accept that we're probably not going to be on totally top form the first day we get back and maybe just lower our expectations slightly so that if you get four hours work done on your first day back - happy days!. Let's be grateful. Let's be proud of ourselves that we completed those four hours rather than beating ourselves up that we didn't do eight. So when you're looking ahead and planning, to the extent you have control, I accept sometimes if we're straight back into teaching or we're straight back into research commitments or whatever it is, then it might be different.

But to the extent you have control, plan for the energy levels that you are likely to have getting back into work so that we set ourselves more achievable tasks, set ourselves a day that actually feels like a nice day back, a nice way to get back into the swing of things rather than setting ourselves up to fail right from the beginning.

Another element that often gets overlooked at this point is communication. Now, what I mean here by communication is telling people if there's stuff you haven't done that you thought you were going to have done by now, telling people when they might expect it, asking people for things you need in order to get on with your next bit of work, following up stuff that you thought people would have given you, maybe comments on documents and things like that.

So that communication piece that we all need at whatever stage of our academic career is going to be really important this week. And one of the reasons that this gets neglected is because often when we're telling ourselves that we should have done things before, or we should be further ahead by now, we start feeling emotions like shame and guilt.

We start feeling bad about the fact that we are where we are, that we haven't made the progress that we've done. And one of the things that happens when you're feeling either shame or guilt is that you avoid other people because you don't want to tell them that you haven't done the thing. And you don't want them to think badly of you and all these stories we tell ourselves.

And the problem is what that then leads to is a situation where they don't know what's going on. And they don't know when to expect the piece of work. And all those worries we were having that those people might have opinions about us, they probably still will have opinions about us, just about the fact that we haven't told them what's going on, rather than about the fact that we haven't done the piece of work. And so when that's another reason why these thoughts that create shame and guilt can really hold us back. What I want you to think instead is either I can still communicate whilst I'm feeling embarrassed about the fact I haven't done this, or to focus on thoughts that make you feel less embarrassed. It's understandable that I haven't done this yet. There was a lot on, those sorts of things. And use those thoughts and feelings to drive you to actually be in communication with people. Tell your supervisor where you're at with the pieces of work that you had intended to do over Easter. Tell your module teams where you're at with planning for the summer. Ask your supervisors for feedback. Tell your students you haven't gone through their manuscripts yet. Whatever it is. Ask for that marking extension. If you are three days out from the marking deadline and you haven't done it yet, ask for that extension. Ask for relief from something else so that you have time to do it. I know it's not always possible, but the worst thing you can do is to ask for these things after the deadline. I used to be a head of education, so I used to oversee all of this stuff. And members of staff would come to me sometimes a few days before the marking deadline and be like, I am not going to be able to make this deadline. And then I would be able to have a conversation with them about, do I need you to mark it quicker? You know, it's first year work, not too much feedback, just crack on. We just need to get it done. Or can I give you a bit of extension because actually the exam boards aren't for a while or whatever it is. We can actually have a conversation about how to prioritize, whether I can bring in more people to help you. The most frustrating were the ones that waited either until the day of the deadline or after the deadline to tell me they hadn't done it because by then there wasn't a lot I could do. There weren't many ways that I could help. There certainly weren't as many options. Options as had they discussed it with me sooner. So whatever it is that you feel you should have done by now and you're worried to tell somebody, try and have those conversations. Think about what thoughts would you need to have in order to have those conversations. For me, thoughts, like, it's understandable that I didn't get this done. It doesn't mean anything about me as an academic, that I haven't done this. The more neutral kind of, I mean, it's not ideal that I haven't done this, but in a year, no, one's going to remember things like that. So rather than these stories that we can whip up, that everyone's going to hate us, everyone's going to think we're useless, et cetera, et cetera, communicate where you're at now so that people know where they're at. They know when they're likely to get things and are able to kind of plan their work around you. 

There's nothing worse. I remember when I used to moderate scripts and the first marker would be late getting them to me. And I'd be like, I've, I've blocked time out of my diary to moderate these. And now you're telling me I'm not going to have them, but you didn't tell me in enough time for me to use that for something else. And you certainly didn't tell me in enough time for me to block other time out of my diary to do the moderation. Whereas if you tell people earlier, they can shift their plans to be like, Oh, okay. So I'm not going to be doing that this week. I can do something else. And I need to look ahead to next week and plan that in instead. Try. To communicate, even if it feels really uncomfortable.

The final element I wanted to talk about today is the thoughts that you're having about this upcoming term. One way you can figure out what thoughts you're having is by doing a thought download. Just grab a piece of paper and a pen right at the top of it, when I think about this term, I am thinking, Dot, dot, dot.

And then just finish those sentences. Write for five or ten minutes. Try and force yourself to keep going, even when you think you've run out of things to say because can never quite tell what will come out when you keep writing. And really notice the thoughts you're having about this upcoming term.

Because when we're having thoughts that lead to feelings of dread or overwhelm or any of these sorts of negative emotions, again, it's really easy to then start procrastinating, to start avoiding work, taking on other things that feel more interesting than the boring things that you've got to do. And one of the best ways to work with that is to just know that those thoughts are there. So what are you thinking about this upcoming term?

When you're looking at the thoughts you're having, I also want you to try and avoid bringing too much drama into the conversation. So sometimes we're thinking things like, I just wish I didn't have to go back. I never actually want to do this. What am I doing with my life? What on earth has happened? We bring all this kind of superlative drama into it that can sometimes just make us feel like there's a massive, massive problem here. And sometimes there can be. Sometimes we're genuinely doing a job or a PhD that we don't want to be doing anymore and that's something that we can look at in due course. But often, this stuff is pretty normal. If you've had some time away doing something different, even if that time was just time to focus on the work things that you wanted to focus on rather than actual holiday time, but either way, it's really understandable that that transition back into summer term feels hard and that you're having thoughts that stimulate feelings of dread or overwhelm or any of those other negative emotions. This doesn't necessarily mean anything about you or your job or having to change anything. Sometimes that can just be part of a transition from a holiday period back into a work period.

And that's not to say that we want to be feeling dread every single time we come back after holidays for the rest of our career. I'm not saying that for a second. But sometimes when we get that in a fleeting way, we can turn it into a massive deal that it doesn't have to be. It's completely normal to have a fleeting sense of not wanting to go back to your job. A temporary sense that you want to run away and start a bookshop or whatever it is. That's okay. There's nothing wrong here. Does this mean that you should actually leave academia or leave your PhD, go and do something different? Maybe, perhaps some people, I mean, I did, you know, I had many of these fleeting moments until they became less fleeting and then decided that what it was that I wanted to do differently. So yeah, for some of you, it might mean something about your futures and the decisions that you need to make. But you don't need to make those decisions right now. Those are not decisions to make when you're in the midst of a transition from holiday back into term time. 

These are decisions to make when you're more back into the swing of things, when you can put aside time to think about it properly. It's something that I help individual clients with to help figure out what their academic story is, what their academic journey is and where they want it to go next, and I'd really encourage you to say to yourself, yeah, I will think about that stuff, but not right now. Let's get back into the swing and we'll think about it from there. Because often that's just what it is. It's that moment of resistance before we get back into the swing of things. 

I also want you to think about who you can seek support from this term. We're starting a new phase of the academic year, and often there are new challenges associated with that. Maybe it's things that you've been struggling with for the last term, maybe it's new things that are coming up now that you're not sure how to do. Whatever stage of your academic career you're at, there are people that can support you with those different challenges. And I want you to spend a little bit of time thinking about who those might be. If there are particular things that you're worried about, have a think about who could support you. It could be peers, it could be other people within your department, wider around the university, whether it's at the graduate school or whoever provides your staff development, for example. It could be outside of the department, it could be people you find on social media or through other academic networks that you have. There are always people that can support you. Obviously, if you're interested in coaching, hit me up. Beyond that, without spending any money, there are always people that can help you navigate some of these more challenging elements of academia. 

If you feel like you shouldn't need to, to ask for help, I want you to really sort of explore those thoughts and explore whether they're true and explore whether they're supporting you at the moment. I would argue that everyone who has ever succeeded in academia has received support, mentorship, patronage, however you want to describe it, and reaching out to others to help you with things that you're finding more challenging or to connect you to places that can make it all feel a little bit easier is a key part of building your own academic community and getting the support that you need to succeed. So please do put aside a little bit of time. to just ponder on what support you need this term and who might be able to provide that for you. 

While we're exploring our thoughts, the other thing I want you to think about is what thoughts will generate the emotions that you want to be feeling and that will enable you to take the actions that you want to take. Because often when I dig into it with my clients, there is a bunch of stuff that you love about your PhD. There is a bunch of stuff that you love about your academic work, your student work, your life at university. And I want you to take a minute to remind yourself of some of those things. Remind yourself what you're looking forward to doing, what you are excited about, because we don't always have to make all the negatives go away. There's a lot about academia to be frustrated and pressured about right now. But sometimes when we can spend a little bit more time remembering the reasons we're doing it, and remembering the things that we love about it, it's easier to get on with the things that we actually want to do.

And once we start getting on with the things that we want to do, we can get that sense of momentum, that sense of competence that can really help us to enjoy this transition and enjoy getting back into the swing of work. 

So for me, what does that look like? Well, this week I have a couple of different supervisor trainings. I offer training sessions to universities for PhD supervisors. I've got a couple of those coming up this week. I am still running my, how to be your own best boss program, which is going really well. I have some sessions with that, I have sessions with my membership at Birmingham and I actually have a bunch of new individual clients as well. So it's a busy week in terms of sessions, which I'm excited about, slightly overwhelmed, but excited, looking forward to it. And I'm reminding myself how much I enjoy being in those, those live sessions. 

I have a whole bunch of admin tasks and I'm going to chip away at those in order of urgency. And I'm going to try and put some time in my diary for the week after next to really dig into some of those, rather than get all caught up on those this week and then feel bad that I'm not on top of everything. If they've waited this long, they can wait a while longer is my little mantra on those. 

And I'm really excited about the idea of starting to plan for academic year 24 25, but again, that is something that I've sort of mindfully decided to put back a couple of weeks, let myself get back into term, let's get this supervisor training done, let's get a little further along with my group program, and then the real planning for next year starts.

I have some exciting things coming. You guys will be the first to hear about them as always. And I know me, I know that I get excited about the planning more than I do about the kind of administrative implementation of some things. And so I am quite mindfully telling my brain, yeah, jot down ideas, but we're going to think about this properly in a couple of weeks. Let's get on top of the things we're doing now. 

So if you are someone who's going to be in one of my sessions this week, I'm super excited to see you. If you're not, why not? I have a special offer on my PhD student workshops that I have running between the now, between now and the middle of June. So if you are somebody who works at university, or if you can tell your supervisors about this stuff, I have a special deal where you can get access to all my remaining workshops for a much reduced rate, do make sure that you get in contact if that might be of interest to you. 

I really hope today's podcast has been useful for you, whether you're making the transition last week and are still feeling a bit overwhelmed or whether you are not quite going back just yet, I hope that the transition can be as smooth as possible and that you can look after yourself during it so that we can all ease ourselves into this upcoming term, and all the exciting challenges that it will bring.

Thank you 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.