2.35 What to do if you feel stuck

Often as PhD students or academics, we get that feeling of being stuck and unable to do the next steps. In this episode, I coach Danielle, who struggles with feeling "stuck", making decisions about next steps and procrastination. We discuss where these problems come from and identify some steps to move forward. Ideal for anyone who feels that they are behind, overwhelmed or don't stick to their schedule. 

****

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

****
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

Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD life coach. And this is the third now in my series of episodes where we actually do a live coaching session here on the show. And so joining me today, I'm super excited to say is Danielle. It's so good to have you here. Let's start, tell people a little bit about who you are and what you do. 

Danielle: So, I would class myself as a third space professional. I work as an educational developer in a research intensive higher education institution and I am currently in my second year of a PhD around higher education research. It's non traditional in the way it's half of it is modules and the supports to get you up to speed and then the other half is doing the real thing.

Vikki: Perfect. So another one of my part time students that we have so much to learn from, I think, because doing a PhD part time is like the iron man of doing a PhD. So what's feeling challenging at the moment? 

Danielle: So there's definitely quite a few things that are swirling around in my part time PhD universe. I think probably one of the foundational ones that I would like to unpick personally and I think really challenges quite a lot of us at different points is the whole thing of feeling stuck. And I think feeling stuck and labeling it as such feels slightly less me judging myself than calling it procrastination. But it's trying to make sense of that and where it can be helpful and obviously where it can be challenging and how I can sort of dampen down the challenging bits of, of those tendencies and you know, soar to the great heights. 

Vikki: Definitely. We love soaring to great heights. Perfect. That sounds like a great topic, particularly for a one off coaching session like this. We can have something that feels quite tangible where hopefully from this, you can go and do some things differently after we've had this conversation. Hopefully for everybody listening, they'll be able to take something quite tangible from it as well. So let's start, tell me a little bit more about what you mean by stuck. 

Danielle: I think for me, stuckness is multifaceted. So it's partly around feeling a bit like an imposter. So the department I'm doing the PhD in is, is very much about higher education research, teaching, learning, assessment, et cetera, hence why I'm there and I'm really enjoying it. But it's something I've experienced before is you're feeling like the people that are tutoring you, your academic colleagues are just on such a higher level plane that sometimes it can really mess with your head. It's almost like those beginner feelings of being a first year undergraduate going, what the heck? And almost like that thinking, I want to know there's a right answer or a wrong answer. And intellectually, this is what I talk about and I believe that's obviously not how life works but I think there's, there can be always those points when you're feeling like, I just want to know there's a right way of doing it. And, you know. There's methods and methodologies and ontologies and epistemologies, and there's lots of ologies, and I feel sometimes that I can be like this duck that's in the pond that's just like, my legs can be going like this. And I'm not going anywhere, which is just a weird place to be because, you know, I, I could list off and I exhort all my students, I know what to say, right? But it's how do you make those incremental steps, I guess, to launching, And maybe, I think probably at this point, I've been doing a lot of like, reading, and not, I don't know what's wrong with me, it's just like, not much putting it down, because I know that once you put something down, you've then got something to build on, so it's, it's just, it's a bit weird, I'm in a bit of a weird limbo y state.

Vikki: Okay. A weird limbo y state. Yes. Cool. So, there's definitely stuff there, as you say, about feeling like there's a right answer and you're not maybe qualified to decide what the right answer is. But let's understand a little bit more of the specifics first. So how does this actually manifest? If I was seeing you work, or I could see inside your head day to day, how does this actually affect you? 

Danielle: So I think one thing would be, I would, and this is the most hilarious, thing to ever confess, so I. really don't like housework. And I have, at moments, gone and purposefully done housework because it meant that I wasn't just almost staring at my screen kind of thing.

Danielle: So that, that was just a really interesting observation about my behavior. I thought, Ooh, it's obviously gotten to a point where I really need to physically walk away. There's that whole sort of hamster wheel kind of paddling furiously of trying to find, you know, the right theory or just the right kind of language and, you know, the whole frustration that can come out and it's knowing when to stop going down delicious rabbit holes because it's like fundamentally, I find everything really interesting, probably too interesting. And I think it's trying to work out how I can be more purposeful, um, probably less panicky. Um, and just feel confident to, go on those different steps that lead you to the end product. It's just that thing of feeling like you don't quite belong or you're broken or you're not normal and I think pretty sure that this is all normal and it's not just me being defective or anything like that, but it's, yeah, it's just, how do I get pulled out of that? 

Vikki: Absolutely. And, you know, I can sit here and tell you that I hear this all the time and that this is completely normal and that nothing that you've said in my mind means that you're defective or broken or not normal or any of these things.

Vikki: But I'm sure lots of people have told you that. Yeah. And, you know, you cognitively know that, but that's not the same thing as kind of consciously believing it inside. 

Danielle: It's not, no. The knowing and the believing, sometimes they're just, they're wandering off in different directions. 

Vikki: Why is that a problem?

Danielle: Because A, I need to progress. So, this is helping me make sense of who I am, where I am in the picture of higher education, what my positionality, what my belonging is, how I can be the best person. I think it also comes back to a student experience. I try and bottle all my student experiences to feed into my own practice and how can I make sense and move on will help me then be a better teacher and facilitator of learning. Um, so I think, I think those, those are some of the many myriads of reasons.

Vikki: One thing I'm seeing here, and tell me whether this feels true to you or not, is there's quite a lot of pressure here that not only do you feel that you don't know some of this stuff and you're not sure whether you're good enough and you're not sure whether you can make the right decisions to progress. And from that layer, there seems to be a layer where you're making that mean something about you. That because I'm not clear on these things, maybe I'm broken, maybe I'm defective. Maybe I'm not good enough. But then it seems like there's almost this other layer of and I need to overcome this because otherwise I won't be able to be a good PhD student, I won't be able to support other students in the future, I won't be a good professional. And that, that feels like a lot of pressure on this learning environment. 

Danielle: Yeah, and I think, I know there's a lot of external factors that I'm probably internalizing, not the least, working extensively in a, in a research intensive institution, and being able to be a ninja researcher, in whatever shape or form that is, is highly valued and, and knowing that I, it's just like, I'm not going to be that at the beginning, but it's almost like, what building blocks do I need to actually really believe that? 

Vikki: At what stage in your PhD do you think that should be cemented and clear? That you believe that you can do a PhD that you know how to make your decisions and so on, when should that be cemented.

Danielle: It's from an intellectual point of view, I probably know that it's not something potentially that would happen during it, it might, you know, happen once somebody says the magic words, congratulations, you're a doctor or it might not even happen till after, many years after. I'm not expecting to get a whole of anything. I'm actually wanting to build up sort of segments like an orange of confidence, because I know I can have a weird trait as well around assessment. Sometimes I can convince myself totally irrationally that I have failed and I can't read feedback for maybe a week or so after it's been released because I am totally convinced at some point that I am a failure. It's one of those little things that are sitting in the back of my mind. And then, like, I know it's all irrational, but it doesn't stop me sort of going through those motions, and so that's why, like, I'm wanting to sort of develop some sort of techniques to lift myself up to the next rung and banish, not wholly, I'm not expecting to banish some of these things entirely, but actually just making a bit of progression, so. Fingers crossed. 

Vikki: Yeah, and definitely. So let's, let's get even more specific. What is one piece of work that you are either intending or currently working on at the moment that you feel a bit stuck on? 

 So, I've got a module, which is looking at, you're given a smorgasbord, you know, as long as it hits the learning outcomes, you can basically look at anything you, you like, in regards to higher education. And I put together a little framework to support learning design. So, I, I've done a lot of the thinking. But what I hadn't found is a theory, support, and really concretize what I was trying to express, and then, then, then it kicked in of, you know, how can I tell people that, you know, live and breathe this, which is the irrational bit, you know. How do I know what a good thing looks like? And I mean, probably if you look at a transcript of what I'm saying, I, I know a lot of these things are irrational to think and there's lots of journal articles and this, that and the other. There's lots of published things out there that provide that structure and support and ideas of, you know, how you can put stuff together. It's just, I feel, just feel a bit like I'm in quicksand as well. Yeah, it's, it's those tensions and feeling like I've got enough brain space to really pick how things are because, you know, if you've got a very, over full professional life, you've got an over full personal life, you know, things that can't be dropped in either and then that then becomes some things that can be dropped. So, yeah. Yes, it's a, it's a challenge. 

Vikki: Definitely. And I can see how the PhD work becomes the stuff that gets dropped, right? Cause you've got your job and obviously other people are relying on you, expecting you to do things and stuff. And then you've got your personal life where people are relying on you and where it feels fun and easy and you feel kind of comfortable in it .

Vikki: And then you've got these. tasks that feel quite tenuous, feel like things that part of you believes you can't do, part of you believes that you should be able to do, and that just feel very unclear as to how to progress them. It's not a surprise that That those are the things that slip. You know, it's got lots of the characteristics of, you know, it's unclear, it, our thoughts about it induce emotions.

Vikki: Those of you watching YouTube will see that I sort of did a little wonky thing with my eyes there. That's because the, the fact you've got the work doesn't cause emotions, but the thoughts we have about the work can cause emotions, um, and it's tasks that induce emotions we don't like that we end up procrastinating.

Vikki: And so, all of this is, is really understandable. The bit that I think is really useful to think about, though, is how much extra pressure you're putting on yourself by telling yourself you're being irrational. Because I feel like there's this whole load of self judgment. 

Danielle: Oh, a hundred, a hundred, a hundred percent.

Vikki: That this shouldn't be an issue. 

Danielle: No, I'm, I'm like, I know I'm good at self judgement, I like a hundred percent know that. 

Vikki: And that's something, when people have got really good self awareness and really good reflection skills like you do, we can almost use it as a stick to beat ourselves with. I know I shouldn't be thinking about it like this, but I am. I know cognitively I'm a beginner and that's okay, but I just don't believe it. And. I think the most useful place to start is there. That it's completely normal. Let's be totally compassionate about the fact that it's completely normal to cognitively think one thing and to believe something else, or at least not to be able to act on, at the moment, our cognitive beliefs.

Vikki: And so I would really encourage you to avoid words like irrational, because knowing something and feeling it as true for yourself Are just two completely different things. There's nothing irrational about the fact that that doesn't match up.

Danielle: Yeah, it, it probably comes back to feeling that a lot of words and concepts are very negatively related. And, you know, the internalization of that. Because I've always thought, you know, there's probably very little that somebody in, in power or authority could say about me that I can't say better about myself in a sort of a beating oneself up way. point of view, but that's, I know it's, it's not healthy, but it's, it's feeling, how can you get out of probably that cycle of, of, of thinking? And I know it's not an instant thing either. So. 

Vikki: It's definitely not an instant thing, but it starts from recognizing compassionately that it's, this is completely normal. The beating yourself up is completely normal. For all those of you listening who spend too much time beating yourself up, the first thing to do is to stop beating yourself up about beating yourself up because then we're just adding more judgment. Of course you beat yourself up. It's understandable. It's the way society trains us.

Vikki: It's the way people with high expectations of themselves sort of learn to treat themselves. It's often how we've got stuff done in the past. Of course you beat yourself up. There's nothing wrong with that. Do we want to do it forever? No. Are we going to make it completely disappear? No, probably not. Can it feel an awful lot easier? Yeah, definitely.

Vikki: But it starts from accepting that this is all completely normal. And I think this will be true, there'll be people who are full time PhD students that have come straight from their masters who will be feeling exactly the same way. But this is particularly true for part time students. I see this time and time again. I have so many part time clients. And you're so used to being a relative expert in your day to day job that it's really dissonant to suddenly get used to and be okay with not knowing in this other place. And especially, it's an issue for mature students who come back to study full time. Definitely. But I find it's even more of an issue for people who have got this weird parallel world where in one world they're, they're senior and knowledgeable and they know what they're doing. And then in this other world, they're relative newbies and they're, they're really unsure.

Vikki: So nothing weird here, nothing broken. The other thing that I think is the error we make when we're thinking about this stuff is thinking that we need to resolve any of this in order to do things. Okay. Okay. So, often, and again, tell me if this feels true for you, often people think that I just need to get a bit more confident and then I'll be able to X. I just need to feel a bit less lost and then I'll be able to Y. Are these things you tell yourself? 

Danielle: I, yes. I think they definitely come into play. 

Vikki: And what I want us to have a ponder on is how can you do your next tasks whilst not feeling any more confident than you do at the moment?

Danielle: One of the ways could be just to put some stuff down. You know, it's something I'm happy to tell other people. I need to take my own advice and just put it down because putting something down that's a draft is nothing to be sniffed at. That's a great achievement. And if you don't have a draft, you certainly don't have a final product at any point.

Vikki: What prevents you from doing that at the moment? What, what thoughts, I'm going to say, what thoughts prevent you from doing that? 

Danielle: Probably, um, anxiety around structure. Rightness. Um, but I, I do know, you know, I can go, there's plenty of stuff that's been published, you know, if I can find something on a similar theme, that will help me from a structural point of view. Maybe even just, you know, setting myself a task of writing 50 words or 100 words. 

Vikki: But what would you need to think in order to do? So what happens here, and I want you to, you're doing it, and everyone does it, and everyone you've ever spoken to will also do it, is we focus in the actions. What actions do I need to take? I just need to do a draft. I just need to set myself 50 words to do. And these are all true. Yeah, these are definitely the kind of actions you need to be taking. 

Vikki: What I want to know is, we know that our actions are driven by our thoughts and our feelings. And at the moment, other people will have said to you, You just need to start.

Danielle: Just do it. 

Vikki: But if you're thinking, I need to know what the structure should be, I don't know enough to decide on the structure, then of course you're not going to start. So, what thoughts and feelings might enable you to start a draft without knowing any more than you do at the moment about the structure and the rightness or anything else?

Danielle: I

Danielle: think probably space, finding a, finding a space, actually telling myself I can do that, and 

Vikki: You can do what? What are you telling yourself that you can do? 

Danielle: I can do X or Y, whatever needs to start or to continue. 

Vikki: Do you believe that? Do you believe you can do it? 

Danielle: Um, I think equally yes and no. 

Vikki: Okay, then let's think of a different thought. 

Danielle: Because I, I think it's one of those things that I've observed about myself. I can also be very influenced by the emotionality of the rest of my life. And it's almost like, how do I get into this bubble?

Vikki: And this is where we have to be really careful because sometimes we tell ourselves that there are certain preconditions on which we can do this task. I need space. I need a bubble. I need to be in the right mood. I need to be in the right frame of mind. I need to know what the structure is. I need to know that I'm right. And if I don't have those things, can't write it. Yeah. Sorry. And that, you know, all of those things are probably true to some extent. Would this be easier if you were in whatever the right frame of mind is? Yes. If you were on some beautiful retreat in a stately home and wandering the gardens while you think about it and returning to your leather desk overlooking the lake, yes, probably easier.

Vikki: Would the same crap go on in your head that what you're saying is not good enough? Yes, probably. So some of these things might help, but we have to be really cautious about telling ourselves that they're prerequisites. Okay. You do not need space. You do not need to know what the right structure is. You don't need to know whether the argument you're making makes sense or not. 

Danielle: Yep. 

Vikki: To write something. 

Danielle: Mm hmm.

Vikki: So, thoughts around, I'm gonna muddle this out, I'm gonna see where I'm at. 

Danielle: Yep. 

Vikki: And figure it out from there. Or one I love that I use with clients a lot is I can pick. So when we're saying, I don't know what's right. That's true. That's probably true. You probably don't, but is there a specifically right answer? Probably not too. And it becomes this kind of, I'm a beginner. I don't know what's right. I picked that one. Yeah. Who knows? Let's go, kind of vibe. And it sounds a bit flippant and lighthearted, but in some ways I think that can really help. I'm a beginner here. I get to just make it up. 

Danielle: True. And You know, it's almost like being paralyzed because for choice if you're in front of those pick and mix sweets. And you're going, oh, I really like that. It's just like, yeah, it's just, take one. 

Vikki: Actually, just pick. So I'm going to get, that is a great analogy. I was at a farmer's market thingy last weekend, and there was a fudge stall, and there were so many different options, and I ended up picking almost one of everything, which meant I, A, ended up with far more fudge than I intended to buy, and B, when I came to eat it, half of it was really disappointing. And what I should have done is gone, I like that flavor and that flavor, and just, And I didn't, I ended up with a mishmash bag, and it was yummy, don't get me wrong. I love all fudge, but I ended up with a mishmash bag of too many things because I refused to make a decision. And I think that is a great analogy to bring into this.

Vikki: And in reality, I don't need to know, you don't need to know, is it the perfect bag of fudge? Who knows? Does it exist? Yes, it does now because I picked it. And allowing yourself to not think not knowing is a problem is super important here. 

Danielle: Not giving permission. 

Vikki: Permission? I'm not meant to know. This is meant to be a muddle. I'm meant to be figuring it out. There's not a right answer. And I'm not even meant to know what's the top four. I just get to pick something that I think I can make make sense. and then we see from there.

Danielle: Yeah, that makes total sense. 

Vikki: How could that translate to some of the things that you've got to do at the moment?

Danielle: So what I had thought recently was What collectively do I care about enough to look at? In, in greater depth research from a theme point of view and see if I can bunch some themes together. Because it's, it is about, you know, wanting to find out as much about myself as it is about other people, about behaviors, about routes through higher education, teaching, learning. So it's. Yeah, I think going along that road would definitely be a start out of stuckness. 

Vikki: I could pick this. And this feels as good a reason as any. To pick that. 

Danielle: Yep. 

Vikki: Now do be cautious. I'm going to give you one word of warn, warning, warning. That's dramatic. Don't mean warning. One word of like advice or whatever. Anyone who's doing research around stuff that they are deeply personally involved with and mean something about you and all of that as well. Just be really cautious. How often you, um, what's the word? Like, bring that into it, because you can, if you connect something to too many other things, it's like Lego. Have you ever tried to take Lego apart? If you connect it, especially the, the like movementy ones. I can't remember what that's called. They're all attached to so many different things that it's impossible. Sometimes when we have something that feels like it's about us and our development, our career and our sector and our beliefs and everything, it's incredibly hard just to move this one piece of assessment forward.

Vikki: So I would really encourage you to have that motivation in your broader background, in the back of your mind, but that's the job of your whole PhD. That's not that, every single bit of work you do does not have to, like, reveal something about the sector and your position in it and your humanity that underpins this or whatever.

Vikki: Sometimes it's just a piece of coursework. It's just an essay. Let's just write the thing. So just be careful how many, because sometimes it can feel like that's motivating. Yeah. If I remember why I'm doing it, why this is so important, maybe I'll do it. But other times that's what makes the quicksand because this thing is now too important for you to get wrong and it's too important for you not to develop as a person and become a better thinker and, you know, a more reflective practitioner and blah, blah, blah, blah. It, it, it can just be a piece of work. And that's true all the way up to your thesis. 

Danielle: True. 

Vikki: It can just be a piece of work that serves this purpose.

Danielle: Yeah. Yeah. And, and sometimes just cutting losses. Because you've had that dialogue at, at, at length with yourself and just going, no, I will do this. It just needs to pass. 

Vikki: And some of that, it's not that that's unimportant, but you discuss, and I can't remember whether we discussed it since we've been recording or, for everyone listening, we have a little chat beforehand, or whether we, you mentioned it,, before that, but, some of this reflection and the kind of recognizing the change in your own abilities and your own beliefs and things like that only happens in retrospect.

Vikki: So sometimes we are expecting to see our understanding change as we write the thing, we can only write it when we're sure we understand it and stuff. And sometimes, but what we need to recognize is sometimes it's not until. After you've done the thing that you look back and go, Oh my goodness, I know so much more now than I did then.

Danielle: Yes. 

Vikki: But you don't need to see it at the time. 

Danielle: It's just frustrating. 

Vikki: It's so frustrating. Wouldn't it be nice for it to be linear? 

Danielle: The lightbulb should just be like flickering on and off going, Woohoo! 

Vikki: There's no lightbulb. 

Danielle: Darn it. 

Vikki: We just get to look back later and go, Oh, how does that feel when you think about it like that? 

Danielle: It's certainly very helpful and sort of given me a bit of a, like a hook to hang on and just, just do something. 

Vikki: Now just implies it's easy. I'm not saying it's easy. But it's okay just to have a go at this. It's okay to try and figure this out.

Danielle: Definitely. 

Vikki: What's my best guess? You know, when you hear yourself saying, I just don't know. Okay. You don't know. Cool. What's your best guess? That's all we need. We just need your best guess. It doesn't have to be right, which probably doesn't exist anyway, just need a best guess. I read, I'll try and link to it in the show notes because I'm going to butcher it if I try and remember the exact place I found it, but I read some really interesting research describing the PhD as a liminal space where you're transitioning from being like a taught student through to being an independent researcher.

Vikki: And the problem with that is that we inherently have to do things in a place where we feel uncertain. We have to do things in a place where it's unclear, because the research is unclear, because that's the problem with being on the cutting edge of research is you're doing things no one's done. So there's no answer here. And us as an individual is in this state of flux and change and we're becoming someone else. But in order to become them, you have to act while we're not them. 

Danielle: Uh, the whole fake it till you make it, um. 

Vikki: Yeah, but that sound, that, yes. 

Danielle: But better phrased. 

Vikki: Yeah, I will. Well, so I'll, I I'll give a shout out. So, Jamie Pei, who has been a guest on the podcast before, has released a blog on Jo Van Every's.

Vikki: blog site. Jamie wrote this post about confidence. And one of the things she talks about in that is that we don't have to aim for, um, kind of a. flashy, sure of ourselves version of confidence and fake it till we make it because we don't have to fake it. We just can be okay with being unsure. So it's not about being a PhD student who doesn't know what you're doing, but pretending you know what you're doing. It's just being a PhD student who knows, okay. I'm not meant to know it all. I'm a PhD student. My job is to do the best I can with the stuff I've got and with the current ability I have. That's my only job. The rest of it comes when we look back and see how much we've developed. So we haven't got to fake anything. We haven't got to pretend that we're comfortable with this. We just need to get used to the fact that it does feel a little bit uncomfortable. Oh. That's not a problem. That's not a sign that something's gone wrong.

Vikki: That's just the space you're in. But then actually, if we don't make that a problem, it feels a lot less uncomfortable. Because instead of being, this is so hard, it shouldn't be hard. I don't know what the right answers are. I should know what the right answers are. We're like, well, I don't know, we'll figure it out. I'm bright. I can do things. I'll choose something and we'll see if they like it. I'll make a good case and let's see what happens. 

Danielle: Yeah. Cause that because maybe some of that whole thinking, um, comes from just feeling like you're enculturated to ignore the emotionality of learning, that any, any learning that's worth is at some point hard and challenging to make, you know, make it stick. And that whole narrative around, you know, perfection. And failure is seen in a, in a really negative light, but actually everybody fails at everything at some point or other. It's, it's really interesting how we can internalize things from society that make absolutely no sense.

Vikki: And we can, we can recognize that. We can go, Oh, look at me, believing that and sort of notice it. We don't have to beat ourselves up because as you say, this stuff's pretty deeply ingrained in our society and the institutions that we're in. But just because it's in our heads, we just don't have to take it that seriously sometimes. Be like, oh, look at me trying to be perfect again. That's okay. Not going to be perfect because I'm a beginner. So let's go. What do I need to do? And I think that's something that people underestimate the power of, that just because you're thinking it, you don't have to hate yourself for thinking it, and you don't have to make it go away.

Vikki: You can just go, yeah, I do think that, but we're doing this anyway, so might as well crack on. Let's give it a go. 

Danielle: Yes, I can. 

Vikki: Yeah, of course you can. My final thing, you said you chose the phrase getting stuck as improvement on procrastination. And I like the logic that you're thinking about how you talk to yourself about this. I'm going to dispute the benefits of calling it stuck though. 

Danielle: Right. 

Vikki: Because I think, and you can tell me whether your version of it feels different. To me at least, stuck implies a certain lack of control. That there's things holding you there. I like to frame stuck as I haven't yet made a decision.

Danielle: Okay.

Vikki: Because for me that feels less scary. I'm not stuck. Nothing's trapped me here. I haven't, I'm, you know, I'm not some princess in a fairy tale who's got like the ivy come up around my legs and pulling me into the depths. I'm not stuck. I just haven't picked what I'm focusing on yet. And it's not that you haven't found the theory. You haven't chosen it. Because there're theories, this piece of work you've got coming, you can wedge any old theory to fit it if you want to, you just haven't picked yet. 

Danielle: Yeah. 

Vikki: And that's okay because you've been telling yourself it needs to be perfect and it needs to be the exact right one and da da da. But when it comes down to it, you just haven't picked and you get to pick. 

Danielle: I get to pick. Maybe that's, maybe that's the title for the episode. I get to pick. 

Vikki: You get to pick. You're not stuck. You get to pick and it's not that big a deal. It feels like it. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it shouldn't feel like it.

Danielle: No, there's lots of feelings. 

Vikki: That's okay. But we just get to pick and do the next thing.

Danielle: Thank you.

Vikki: How does that feel? 

Danielle: Yeah. Very useful. Very useful. 

Vikki: What do you think your kind of main take homes from today would be?

Danielle: I think about the permission to transition, the permission to choose to do to justify my choice is just as legitimate. I think it's, it's, and it's practicing as well. Just keep on practicing. 

Vikki: I'm practicing making choices. 

Danielle: Yeah. 

Vikki: Practicing constructing an argument. 

Danielle: Yeah. 

Vikki: If it's not the right one this time, and maybe there was something better I could have picked. 

Danielle: Yeah. 

Vikki: Okay, cool. We'll try that next time. We'll try a different one next. I'll use a different process to pick next time, but let's practice with this one and we thought about what would help you, you know, you came up with some great actions like just getting on and doing a draft, doing words or things like that. And we were talking about what thoughts might help. I think I'm practicing could be a great one here. I think sometimes, you know, you think about people who do music and art and things, and those of us who are just on the appreciation end of that, we see the end product, we see them do their orchestral piece, we see their thing hanging in a gallery and we don't see the hundreds of hours that they've practiced.

Vikki: We don't see the piles and piles of canvases where they've done all their different practices. You know, I, I follow these people on Instagram who do all these beautiful things and you scroll and they're like, they've painted the same thing in slightly different colors, slightly different ways, hundreds and hundreds of times.

Vikki: And I wonder why mine aren't as good as them. Yet somehow as academics, and especially as PhD students, we think we should be able to sit down and write an article and it will look like a published article. And even as an experienced academic, we don't do that. So why beginner academics tell themselves they should be able to do that? It's like, let's just practice writing a paragraph. 

Danielle: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's just the weirdest thing to be thinking about oneself. And, you know, I think the more we can talk about The messiness of, especially transition, which obviously I'm feeling very transition y at the, at the minute, as you've articulated all of that stuff that goes on that nobody sees, but if you don't do the stuff, then you're never going to have that in baby masterpiece. 

Vikki: Exactly. We have to do our rough sketches, our failed attempts, our practices, our early versions, all of these things, in order to then get to something that is good enough to hang in a gallery and even that, you know, the gallery can be the school hall at the local fete or the gallery can be the national gallery.

Vikki: It's the same in science, right? Your PhD will sit on a shelf in a PhD. Some of it might go into a journal that's pretty good. Some of it might go into journal that's amazing. Who knows? We just, we need it to exist. And we get to practice a bunch on the way. 

Danielle: Practice, practice, practice, practice.

Vikki: Just going to practice. Amazing. And you talking about the, the sort of being open about the process, I think is so true. And that's why I really appreciate your willingness to be open and to discuss the challenges that you have. I empathize with them so much. I know my clients do. I know the listeners do. So thank you very much for coming on and thank you everyone for listening. And I will see you next week. 

.