2.33. Why we should think of our careers in phases

So many of my PhD student and academic clients are feeling overwhelmed, overcommitted and like they have to do everything. In today's episode I talk about why we should think about our careers in phases, as a way of addressing this. We're going to think about what we mean by phases, what decisions we can make once we know what phase we're in, and how it can change the way we think and feel about ourselves and our obligations and choices.

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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.

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Transcript

This weekend I've been visiting people that I've been friends with for 15, 20 something, even years. It's been amazing just catching up. Many of you will know I moved away from where I'd been living for a really, really long time to come home to the village that I grew up in. And I really miss these friends. And as we were chattering, as we were talking about health challenges and new babies and becoming a step mom and all this stuff, I realized that these were the same women who I had talked about dating challenges and building my career and all of that good stuff that we go through in our twenties and thirties.

And it just really struck me how different our lives are now. Our friendship is the same. We don't see each other so much, but our friendship is still there. But the stage of life we're at is so very different. What has any of this got to do with academia? Well, I had already planned to do an episode about phases in academic life, and how recognising the phase that you're in can really help you to prioritise and accept and be intentional. And it just really struck me that often we recognize these phases in our personal lives, but not so much in our professional lives. So today, that is what we're going to think about. We're going to think about what we mean by phases, what decisions we can make once we know what phase we're in, and how it can change the way we think and feel about ourselves and our obligations and choices.

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.

Hello, and welcome to episode 33 of season two of the PhD life coach. Virtually all my clients, no matter what stage of their academic career they're at, feel like they should be doing more than they are, that there are too many different things. They can't give themselves enough to all of them, and they struggle to prioritize. They have people above them saying, Oh, but you should be writing up, but you should be applying for jobs, but you should be doing outreach, but you should be networking, and then as you progress through academia, you should be developing new modules by now, you should be applying for independent grants by now.

By now, you should be doing this. You should be doing your community contribution. You should be showing yourself as a leader, dah, dah, dah, dah. And it can become this enormous pressure that there's no way that all these things fit. And often, certainly I used to tell myself that they should be able to fit. And it was a comment about me and my abilities that meant that they weren't fitting. And that if everyone was telling me, this is what I should be doing, then presumably this is what everyone's doing. And so maybe there's something wrong with me. And as I went through, the more I realized that that's just not true, that there's nothing wrong with me, that's not what I mean. Obviously, there's lots wrong with me, but the fact that I couldn't fit everything in wasn't the things that were wrong. And you might feel like this too, you might feel like if only you were a little bit more organized, if only you could get that time management system running, everything would be fine.

But in reality, there is too much to do. And if you haven't listened to my episodes about what to do, if there's too much to do, do make sure you go back and check out that one after today's episode because it's a cracker.

The truth is, there's too many things and you can't do them all the time. And what I always get asked is, okay, I, I kind of accept that. I can see your point, you know, it's hard to internalize, but I take your point. But if that's the case, How do I decide? How do I decide what's enough? How do I decide which things to do? And how do I communicate that to other people? 

Obviously, with anything, you can take decisions on a case by case basis. You can go, Oh, you know, weigh up the pros and cons of this one. Again, got an episode on how to make decisions. You can listen to that one. Um, and that's where you're doing it sort of one at a time, where you're thinking about the next decision, weighing up why you'd do it, whether you like your reasons, all that good stuff. But it still means you're making loads of decisions, and often, if we're not managing our minds carefully, we could be doubting those decisions, worrying what might have been if we'd chosen something else, if we'd chosen more, if we'd chosen less, if we'd chosen differently.

At a wider kind of life level, I also see people on Twitter and my clients and colleagues talking about how they just don't see how it all fits. I don't understand how I'm meant to work and look after my children and exercise and plan healthy meals and look after my parents and see my friends and have a hobby and make a contribution to my community. It just doesn't fit. I don't understand how I'm meant to do all these things. And so even outside of work feeling like so much, we all have then this extra context that's all around it it can make it feel even more like you have a billion different roles and a billion different things to fit into your life.

And so today, this idea of thinking about our lives in phases really helps simplify the process. So what do I mean by a phase? I define a phase as usually around three years in the academic world. So we have a phase where we're doing our undergraduate, maybe yours was four years, depending on what you did, all that stuff. We had a phase, maybe a shorter phase where you were doing a master's if you did one, and then your PhD, depending on where you're doing it in the world, is between three and six years, but if it's a six year one, you probably have a sort of taught component phase and a research component phase. And then as you start heading into academia, if you take on leadership roles, they're often for kind of three to four years, that sort of ballpark. Often you're expected to take the same module for that amount of time. And this isn't a hard and fast rule, you know, if phase feels like two years to you, happy days, we're just not talking about a few weeks.

What I'm really thinking about here is these sort of mid, mid length of time things. So we're not talking decades, but we're talking something more substantive than an academic year. 

So I want you to take a moment and think about how would you describe the phase of your life that you're in. And we're going to focus mostly on your academic life. But if there's key things that are really impacting you happening in your personal life as well, then do bring that in as well. So for me, I am in probably what I would call the middle of my business building phase. I went full time 18 months ago, having left my academic career at that stage. And things are good. Things are going really, really well, but I'm still in that kind of building phase. I'm also still in my kind of homemaking phase. We moved house at the same time into a new build. You've seen this room change color as the podcast goes on. Uh, the rest of my house is changing color too. And so those are my kind of two big phases at the moment. Before that I had a year of a recovery phase, I think it's fair to say, and three years of being head of education during the pandemic. So overseeing all the masters and undergraduate programs in my school. And that was a phase. My head of education phase was a phase. Okay. Have a think about what phase you're in. If you're a PhD student, you're in your PhD phase. But I want you to think, are you in the early bit? Are you in the mid bit? Are you in the late bit? Because all phases, when we think about them in sort of three years, can be broken up into that sort of early, mid and late.

And some of you will be right slap bang in the middle of a transition. So that year I was talking about recovery, I wasn't physically recovering. It was just an exhausting time being head of education during the pandemic. And then wound down some of my admin responsibilities and I knew I was leaving, so I was starting to ramp up the business stuff as well. 

You might be handed in your PhD, applying for jobs, waiting your viva in that kind of a transition. If you're an academic. What phase are you in at the moment? Are you in the sort of pre next promotion phase? Just starting to think about that? In the midst of it? Are you at the point where you're probably going to be applying? Are you about to take on a new big admin role? A leadership role of some sort? 

If you are, by the way, Just to interject, make sure you check out the show notes because me and Jo Van Every, who was on the podcast last week. She's an academic writing coach. She's amazing. If you haven't listened to that yet. Make sure you do. It's a long one and it's really useful. We are doing a webinar 16th of May and it is for anyone who's taking on a new academic leadership role and you're feeling somewhere between excited and a bit scared. Worried about how it's going to affect your life, affect the rest of your work, and worried about how good a job you can do. If that's you, make sure you check out the show notes. I'll include all the details there. Or just contact me on any of my social medias or through my website and I will send you the details. It's £25, it's 90 minutes. Gonna be amazing. Please make sure you are there. Tell all your friends. Anyway, back to the podcast, as they say, um, make sure you've identified what phase of your life you are in at the moment and whether you're kind of early, mid or late in that phase.

What this allows is first of all, for us to recognize the phase we're in as transient. So to be totally honest with you. At the moment, I'm in a phase where I have got a ton of workshops coming up. Some of which I need to finish planning. You know, I know roughly what they need to cover. Have I made the handouts?

No. Are they exactly ready to go? No. Will they be amazing? Of course they will. But I've got a lot of that stuff to do. And sometimes it can just feel a little bit relentless. It was all stuff I chose and I'm super excited about it. And if you want to know more about the workshops, again, check out my website.

, but it feels like a lot, but something that really helps me is reminding myself that I am in the business building phase. By the end of this academic year, I am going to have a whole program that exists. I'm going to have 12 or 14 different student facing workshops. I've got two different staff facing workshops and it's going to be all built.

And whilst next year will be a lot of recruiting people to come to those, there's going to be a lot less course writing next year. Recognizing it as a transient phase really helps that I know in a predictable amount of time there'll be less of this and more of that. I want you to think in your current phase, what is it entirely appropriate that there's more of? So if you are going into a new leadership role, for example, check out the webinar, if you're going into a new leadership role, Then it might be entirely appropriate that you're in the midst of leadership management stuff.

That there is more meetings, more staff liaison, more of all that admin stuff. And it might feel like writing and research is on a bit more of a back burner. And that might be entirely appropriate for the phase that you're in. Again, we'll talk in the webinar about how you can balance that and make it feel like you're still making progress on the research, if that's what you want to do. PhD students out there, it is a transient phase. I know it feels like a really long time, but there will be a time when your PhD is in the past and you will be onto something different and remembering that can help keep things in proportion. 

Recognizing your mini phase, so that like early, mid or late, can also help when we're sort of beating ourselves up a bit as well. So those of you who are PhD students, or if you've just started a leadership role, or you've just started a new academic job, and you know you're in the early bit of that phase, then suddenly we can be like, well, it's completely understandable that I don't know anything.

I'm a first year. I'm not meant to know stuff. Figuring out what I don't know and what I need to find out is part of my job. You're not meant to know what forms you fill in for what or where you get your laptop from or what the expectations are because you're in the early stage of a phase.

And whilst it's still disorienting, it's still, you know, it still doesn't necessarily feel great. Knowing that it's completely appropriate is really, really important. 

We can't avoid the topic that there's an awful lot going on in academia at the moment with people under threat of redundancy and job insecurity and all of those things. And in that case, you're in a phase of uncertainty. You're in a phase of transition. And I'm not going to be as trite as to say that remembering it's just a phase makes it less scary, because I can only imagine how unsettling and frustrating and anger inducing many of the positions that you guys are in can be. But knowing that this is a phase, and knowing that therefore your job is to look after yourself through this phase can really, really help. 

Another benefit of thinking in phases is that we can really intentionally decide what fits within this phase. It's really hard to say, I'm going to do less research, or I'm going to spend less time socializing with my friends, or I'm not going to train for that half marathon or whatever your thing is. If we think of that as a almost indefinite decision, then it can be really hard to stomach that because we want to do those things. And especially if you're anything like me, I want to do all the things but when we remember that actually we're in a phase and we're in a phase where we can make decisions based on that phase, then suddenly you're not saying that you're never going to socialize with your friends lots again. You're not saying that you're never going to do lots of research again. You're never going to train for that half marathon. You're saying that's not the phase I'm in right now. 

I've seen people describe it as sort of burners on a cooker, um, where you can turn them up or down. I'm not such a fan of that analogy, because I don't know about you, but I can turn all the burners on my stove up, and it's absolutely fine. I like to think of it as more like little sliders, where if you move one up, another one goes down and so you're sort of balancing them out. You've got a finite amount of slide there, and you balance it between these different areas.

So I'm in a phase of my life where I'm spending more time with my family. I'm spending more time doing DIY. I'm spending more time doing course creation and I'm spending more time doing one to one clients than I ever have in my life and that's the phase I'm in. I'm in a phase where I'm doing or trying to do more walking. I'm in a phase where I'm currently not doing the circus that I love. that's something that I want to start building back into this phase, but I'm definitely not. When I was head of education, the one thing that I really stuck to outside of work was that I was training pretty sensibly and pretty regularly for my circus stuff. I used to aerial silks and perform and things. So I can recognize that I'm kind of dialing up the family dial. I'm dialing up the home dial, dialing up some of my business building dials and other things are dialing down. I see less of my friends at the moment than I used to because I'm further away from an awful lot of them. I do less strange events where I disappear off around the country to do adventure races and things like that. I went through a big phase where I was doing that. I do less of those things, but it's okay because I've got stuff at work that's intellectually curious for me and that's a fun challenge. I've got stuff that I'm doing that keeps me healthy, healthy enough. I've got stuff that, you know, keeps me connected to people that are important to me. And those are the things that I need in my life. 

What I want you to have a think about is what things are you dialing up at the moment? And in doing so, what things does that mean that you are rightfully dialing down? How could acknowledging what phase you're in help you to mindfully turn down some of those things? Now, I do want to refer you back to something that Jo said last week. Jo said that if something is a priority, it is the first thing that goes into your diary, not necessarily the thing that takes up the most time.

So, If you are dialing something down, it doesn't mean you don't do it. We're not talking about cutting everything out of your life because this is your single minded phase right now. If that works for you, happy days, go for it. But for most of us, we want to think what's a kind of minimum viable threshold.

So I'm never going to dial down exercising to completely zero, because that's just not going to feel good. I'm not going to enjoy it. What that exercise looks like, whether it's mountain biking, whether it's aerial silks, whether it's paddleboarding, whether it's CrossFit, all the different things I've done over my life.

What it is varies and how much I'm training and how intense it is varies, but there is a minimum amount that is what kind of keeps me happy and healthy. So with none of these things are we dialing stuff right now. Same with my family. When I was back in Birmingham I saw my family a lot less than I see them now. So family was kind of dialed down and friends was dialed up. Career building in a different way was dialed up.

So, as you better understand what phase of your life you're in, you can decide what the minimum level is for these different sections of your life is. Some of them, you might turn them down to zero. You might say, you know what? I'm just not trying to do that right now. It's just not a thing. Others will be down, dialed at a ticking over kind of stage. Others will be dialed right up as your main focus. And once you've got this idea in your head and you kind of have an idea of what's turned up and what's turned down, it makes it so much easier to decide what you're going to take on in your life. You can decide, actually, that thing sounds amazing and you're right, it's a great opportunity but that's not the phase I'm in right now. Those of you, if you've just secured a big grant, first of all, congratulations, but you might now be, especially if you've only just secured the grant, you might be in like project doing phase. You've got to make the actual project happen. So when you're in the early got a grant stages, your big thing is getting that grant running, getting whatever approvals you need, getting everything up and sorted and starting to happen.

That might be a time when you turn down applying for more grants, because that's not the phase you're in. You're in the grant implementation phase. Now, if you're in the middle of a grant, and definitely if you're in late phase of a grant implementation phase, you'll certainly be starting to look and dial up the grant application phase so that you've got something to launch into when this one comes to a close.

 And that's where knowing your phase, knowing the stage within that phase can help you to prioritize so that you're not having to judge every single individual thing on its absolute merits. You can sort of make rough rules of thumb as to I do say yes to things like this and I don't say yes to things like that.

When you also understand these different bits of your life and the purpose that they serve, you can also realize where you've got duplication. You know, maybe you're in a phase where you're just finishing up a grant, or you're coming towards the end of your PhD, and you're really in writing phase, there's lots of writing that needs doing. You might then get the offer of doing more writing. Somehow, senior PhD students often get asked, Oh, do you want to contribute to this as well? Do you want to contribute to that as well? Understanding the phase you're in, and understanding that writing is dialed up, for example, it then also enables you to be like, You know what? Have I got all the writing things I need? I, yeah, I think I do. So even within this phase, writing is dialed up, but it doesn't mean I say yes to everything to do with writing. I can go, you know what, I've got my thesis to write and that will do me. That's all I need right now. Or these two papers, you know, are up and coming. I've got a conference coming. That's sufficient. I don't need to say yes to this other co author opportunity. So understanding these little sliders and how we can move them can help us really make decisions about what to say yes to and what to pass on this time.

Another thing I've noticed when I think about my life this way is it enables me to be more grateful for the things that I do less frequently. So, as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, I went back to Birmingham to visit a bunch of friends this weekend and I had a gorgeous time. It was so good to see them all catch up with everybody, meet brand new babies, uh, snuggle puppies and all sorts of good stuff.

And it would be really easy for me to get really sad about the fact that I can't do that more. And I do feel a bit sad about it because I miss them and I love my friends that live up there and I miss the phase of life we were in when we had all the time in the world for each other, when we were all single and we were each other's social life and that was what we were doing.

 But, because I recognise the phase of my life that I'm in, I haven't come home feeling sad. I've come home feeling incredibly grateful that I have those people in my life. And incredibly grateful that even in this phase, I can find little bits of time to spend with them. I also find myself much less beating myself up that I don't see them more often. So often when we're in a phase where we're really busy with thing A and thing B, we then notice thing C and beat ourselves up that we're not spending more time on it. So those of you in leadership roles beating yourself up for not doing more writing. People writing up their PhD, beating themselves up for not seeing their family more. Whatever stage it is, there are things that we have dialed down. And when we've dialed them down by accident or by necessity, but not in a kind of positive, intentional way, we often then beat ourselves up for it. And not only does that not feel good, it also means that you often don't enjoy the thing you're doing when you do it, on the odd occasion that you do it. I could have spent all weekend being miserable that I'm not doing that anymore. But I love the phase I'm in and I'm super grateful for the phase I'm in. And I recognize that when I was in that phase, A, I would have given anything to have met my Mr. Right and I, there, I was beating myself up, that I didn't see more of my family. So, when you don't recognize the phases as phases, then it's really easy to get cross about the fact that things aren't different. If you can see that this is the phase I'm in, it means I've got less of that, but I'm going to enjoy and adore every moment of that that I get, then it can make everything so much more pleasurable.

And that can even be with your work, you know. You can be somebody who is in the midst of a massive management job, but maybe you get one hour a week to do some writing. And instead of it being like, Oh my God, I should do more than this. I should, you know, I can't believe this is all I have time for today. I'm going to enjoy this hour where I just get to think about my academic pursuits. If you find it hard to hold that in your diary, and you find yourself giving out for other meetings and things, Do check out Jo Van Every's academic writing studio. She has a membership program where you can join and they have meeting with your writing where you meet on zoom and kind of commit to doing writing during that slot. So do make sure you check that out. It's really good. 

I've also found that by recognizing the phase you're in, it's easier to be more accepting of the downsides of a phase. Because any phase, no matter how positive, has downsides to it. I spend less time with lots of other people than I used to. And I do miss that. I recently went to a UKCGE conference about doctoral student education. It was amazing. Shout out to anybody I met there. And I loved it. And it really reminded me of all the time where I spent, I had years where I would go to loads of conferences and meet loads of people and have this really big active network. And I loved it. And one of the downsides of my current phase is that I spend much less time doing those things that I really enjoy, but because I recognize it as a phase, it makes me more appreciative of the, the upsides of that phase. So every time I think, Oh, I do really miss swanning around at conferences, talking to people, learning new things, having a good time. I also think, yeah. But because you're in your business building phase and your home building phase, you work all day with a gorgeous Labrador asleep next to you, who you get to snuggle whenever you want. And I reckon, you know, I'm in the midst of Marley phase and that's amazing. 

So by knowing what phase I'm in, I can kind of accept the downsides because they're kind of allowable downsides that enable the phase to thrive and to exist as a phase.

Another thing with thinking about your career in phases is that it enables you to career plan a bit more too. So if you're finding at the moment, especially if you're in mid to late, sort of, section of your phase, you can start thinking about the next phase. Now, not getting ahead of yourself, not ruining this phase by spending too much time dreaming about the next phase, but, if you're finding that there's particular things that you really miss or that you wish you have more of, you can look ahead to how you can have more of those in the next phase.

I definitely want to make sure that I can create a calendar and a cash flow that means that I can go to conferences like the UKCGE one more often. So that's the UK Council for Graduate Education. I loved meeting all the people that were involved in doctoral student support and learning about the research that was going on. It was brilliant. So I know that at the moment, that's going to be a relatively minimal part of my career, but I hope in a year, 18 months time, when the course preparation stuff settled down, where other things have sort of shifted around a little bit in my business model, that I'll be able to build more of that in.

So one of the things I can do is I can reflect, okay, as I move into the next, you know, business growth stage or the business kind of maintenance stage, depending on how things are at, I know I want to make sure I have time for that sort of CPD and that sort of networking. So, we can start thinking, okay, not now, but then. Okay? As you're going through your PhD, you might be right in the midst of a writing phase, and you might be really wishing that you could do more science communication. Well, that's amazing, because that means that you can think about, right, I want to make sure that when I start applying for jobs, I apply for jobs that have that sort of component as a possibility within it, or you might think right at the moment, I'm in the midst of my end of PhD phase or my postdoc phase, lots of writing, lots of data analysis, all that stuff. But actually, I'm really excited about the possibility of developing my teaching in the next phase. And so there you want to make sure that when you're applying for jobs, have you got access to that sort of training? Are they going to give you relief from other responsibilities so that you can do that training? We can use it to start planning what happens 

Finally, and I think this is the biggest thing for me in terms of thinking about my life and phases, is when I think of my life and phases, and I know that some things are dialed up and some things are dialed down, what I can enjoy more than anything is the sense of space that brings. The sense of calm and clarity that comes from not thinking that you're meant to be doing it all. Those of you, I have parents who listen to this, those of you who are in the small people phase of your life. Having just visited people who have very small people in their life. When you've got small people in your life, that's a particular phase. There are some things you are not going to be doing. And that's okay. So, just being able to look at my life and go, You know what? It's, it's got about the right amount of stuff in it. It's hugely freeing because I'm not telling myself I should be able to do all the other things too. I'm not telling myself that I'm in some way flawed because I can't do all of these things.

So I want you to imagine what if you could name the phase you're in. Decide whether you're early, mid, late phase of that. Or maybe you're right on that crux of a transition. Decide what you're dialing up. What you're dialing down, decide how to love the things that you're dialing up and the space that you've got to enjoy them, decide that on the odd occasion, you're able to fit in the other things that you really enjoy them instead of beating yourself up for not doing them more, that you've identified kind of minimum levels, things that are just sustainable, how you can then sit back and go, this is about the right amount of stuff. And I know in academia, that can feel like it's never possible. Maybe we'll never sit there and go, this is the right amount of stuff. But maybe we'll sit there and go, okay, this is a lot. But I can just about manage it if I do some of it badly and I do some of it but a bit late, we can muddle through rather than it being insurmountable and never ending. 

Being able to see where you're at so that you can give yourself compassion. If you're at the beginning of a phase where you don't know anything and where you can be patient with yourself if in the middle of a phase you're kind of bored of it but you're not ready to move on just yet or when you're at the end of a phase and you're either terrified of it finishing or you can't wait for it to finish, we can be patient with all of those things because we recognize that we're at a particular stage of a particular phase and it's completely normal and it's completely okay to be feeling like that.

If you're in the midst of a transition, identifying it as such, I am in a transition, I am in a period of uncertainty right now, and even if it doesn't take away any of the pain and any of the frustration, any of the difficulties you're in, knowing that it's okay that you're finding that hard. It's okay that you're not holding it together.

 I have clients who are being deeply affected by things that are happening in the world, whether it's within the higher education sector or the kind of political, socio political world more generally. And they're being deeply affected by that. And sometimes the best coaching and the best thing you can hear is that it's okay that you're finding that hard and it's okay that that means that you're not doing everything else perfectly or to the level that you're at. Some of you will be menopausal and you'll be in that phase of trying to be an academic or a PhD student while in the midst of a menopause. Some of you will have experienced bereavements and you'll be in that phase of managing that or you're caring for elderly parents while also trying to apply for promotion. Whatever combo of professional and personal phase that you are in right now, recognizing it as that phase, hopefully can help you to plan, help you to prioritize and figure out how best to look after yourself during this phase.

If there is anything I can do to support with that, please do let me know. You can always send me messages on my various social media or contact me on my email, which is vikki@wemburycoaching. com. You can find it on my website. If you're not already signed up for my newsletter. Please make sure you are. I send out little summaries of the podcast so you can remember stuff. you get activities and reflection questions. You're the first to know about any exciting activities. I'll be sending more information about the webinar for upcoming leaders, so make sure you sign up if you're potentially interested in that.

I am here to support you, whether you are a first year PhD student entering the beginning of that phase through to people who are experiencing the transition of redundancy or retirement or anything else that is bothering you. Please let me know what you think of this episode. I would love to hear what phase you're in. If there are particular topics that you want me to cover in the future, do let me know. I love to do, listener requested episodes. I hope this has been useful. 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.