2.40 How to use a Do Know Don't Know list

One of the things I hear clients say most often is that they don't know what to do. They either don't know what decision to make in their life, they don't know how to do something, they don't know how to present their argument, how to structure their paper, they don't know which study to do, they don't know, they don't know, they don't know.

It comes up all the time at every level of the academic journey, whether you're a PhD student or a full professor. This idea that we don't know something and that that is a problem can really cause a lot of delays. It's a huge source of procrastination. If you've written something in your kind of task list for the day and you get to it and you're like, yeah, I'm not really sure how to do that, it's really easy to decide, oh, I'll do it later. It's really easy to put off because you're putting off something that's kind of a bit nebulous anyway. This is something I've addressed with some of my one to one clients recently, and lots of them have had success with a really specific tool that I like to call the do know don't know list, which I'm going to share with you today.

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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

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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

One of the things I hear clients say most often is that they don't know what to do. They either don't know what decision to make in their life, they don't know how to do something, they don't know how to present their argument, how to structure their paper, they don't know which study to do, they don't know, they don't know, they don't know.

It comes up all the time at every level of the academic journey, whether you're a PhD student or a full professor. This idea that we don't know something and that that is a problem can really cause a lot of delays. It's a huge source of procrastination. If you've written something in your kind of task list for the day and you get to it and you're like, yeah, I'm not really sure how to do that, it's really easy to decide, oh, I'll do it later. It's really easy to put off because you're putting off something that's kind of a bit nebulous anyway. This is something I've addressed with some of my one to one clients recently, and lots of them have had success with a really specific tool that I like to call the do know don't know list, which I'm going to share with you today.

Hello and welcome to episode 40 of season 2 of the PhD Life Coach. And we're going to be thinking about this tool, the Do Know, Don't Know list. But first, let's think, why do we even keep telling ourselves we don't know? Well the first thing is, we're all working in an area where we're right at the edges of human knowledge. And we sometimes forget that, I think. It becomes so normal to be in this kind of higher education environment where everybody's doing research, everybody's experts, so much so that most of us don't feel like we're experts, we forget that actually doing things that we don't know how to do is almost entirely our job description, whether you're PhD students or academics, doing things that people haven't figured out how to do yet is what we do. 

Yet often we allow this to be a reason not to act, not to do something. Now sometimes we tell ourselves that we don't know, when we actually don't know. Where there are bits of information that are missing, bits of training that are missing, that would enable us to actually do the thing. So sometimes we just don't know. Other times, what we really mean by I don't know is I haven't decided yet. 

I'm on a bit of a thing at the moment that most time management problems are decision making problems. And I think this is true a lot in the "I don't know" issues too. Often we're saying things like I don't know how to structure this paper. And one of the things we'll think about is how to actually reframe that as I haven't decided yet how I'm going to structure this paper. Because not knowing, I don't know, implies there is a correct solution out there that if only you knew enough, you would be able to do, when in reality that's usually not true. So sometimes there are things we specifically don't know. Other times we tell ourselves we don't know when we just haven't decided yet, for lots of different reasons. The third reason we sometimes tell ourselves that we don't know is because it's easier to tell ourselves that we don't know than it is to do the hard thing. Often when we pin it down, we do know what we need to do. I felt a little bit like this. I wrote a children's novel that I'm still going through submissions and everything like that for, looking for an agent. And I'd written the whole thing. I was pretty pleased with it. It taken me a really long time. I had this wonderful mentor that I won in a competition and she was giving me advice. And I'd written the whole thing in third person. And I was talking to her about it. I was saying, you know, I'm really happy with it, but I just don't know how to make it a bit more vivid, a bit more engaging and all these things I just don't know. And the more we talked, the more it was like. I do know., I need this book to be written in first person. I need it to be the voice of the main character. And I was telling myself I didn't know what to do because the thought of having to rewrite the whole thing was just enormously overwhelming. Now as it was, once I decided I was doing it, went for it, so much better and going through a new round of submissions now.

But sometimes we tell ourselves we don't know when. do, but we don't like the emotions that we think that decision is going to bring up, whether it's going to be something hard, whether it's going to upset people, it's going to disappoint people, whatever it might be. Okay, so there's a bunch of reasons that we tell ourselves that we don't know.

So why is it a problem when we don't know? Well if we're telling ourselves we don't know it's really hard to take action because we don't know what we're doing. We're telling ourselves all the time that we don't know. It's also hard to resolve because when you're saying I just don't know, I just don't know, I just don't know, you're not leaving any space to come up with ideas. We're not energizing that curious part of our brain that we talked about a couple of weeks ago that really help us come up with solutions and decision making and all of this good stuff. We sort of freeze, a bit like a computer that's got too many tabs open. 

 Another thing is we often make it mean something about us. Not only do we not know, but we should know, and if we were good enough at it, then we would know, and other people seem to know, and suddenly now this means that we're not good enough, we don't belong to be here, that everybody else is better than us, all of these things.

We take the fact that we're telling ourselves we don't know things to mean a whole bunch of other stuff that it simply doesn't mean. And that can be even more paralyzing than that initial thought that we don't know.

The final thing is that it also completely hides all the things we do know. When we're saying, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, we forget to acknowledge the things we do know. And almost everything we know a bit about. It's very rare for us to be embarking on something where we have literally no clue. Maybe you don't know the structure of an upcoming article that you're writing. But you do know, I assume, that you're going to start with an introduction and that you're going to finish with a conclusion. You do know that you have to make an argument through the paper. If you're in the sort of sciences area, you know you've got an intro, method, results, and discussion, or whatever format it is for you. There are things you do know. You probably know roughly how long it needs to be. You probably could figure out pretty easily how long paragraphs might need to be. There's a bunch of things that you do know. But when you're telling yourself that you don't know, we forget all of those. So, my solution. My solution here that some of my clients, my one to one clients have been using recently and have found really useful is the do know, don't know list.

 I want you to think of something at the moment that you are struggling with. That you're like, I just don't know how to write this. I just don't know which route to take or whatever. And I want you to grab two pieces of paper and I want you to write at the top of one of them, do know, and I want you to write at the top of the other one, don't know.

Start with the things you do know. I want you to write specifically, in as much detail as possible, all the things that you do know about this thing. All the basic premise behind it, all the basic structure that it should have if you're writing something, whatever it might be. If you're going, I don't know what I'm going to do in this presentation. Well, I do know how long I need to talk for. And I do know that I usually use X number of slides per minute or whatever it is. What do you know? I do know who the audience is. I do know why I'm doing it. Be really silly here. Write down the obvious things. I do know I shouldn't swear in my talk. I do know I, whatever it is. Okay? Get all of that stuff down. 

And now we turn to the don't know list. And I want you again to be as specific as you can here. Don't write, I don't know what the structure should be. Say, I don't know whether I should write about A before I write about B or write about B before I write about A.

Get as specific as you can about all the things that you don't know. Now, as you're doing this, you might remember other things that you do know. Go back to that note. Write them in the do know list. When you're writing the do know list, you might go, I thought I knew that, but now I'm not sure. Brilliant! Put it on the don't know list. But make it really specific. Force your brain not to just go, Well, I don't know. Ask, What don't I know? Get it as detailed as possible. 

Now we've got two lists. First thing is we get to look at these lists and we get to go, you know what, I know some stuff. There's stuff I don't know, but I know some stuff. So we sort of reassure ourselves that we know some stuff. And now we get to ask the first question. How far can I get with the bits I do know? And I would really recommend actually starting with that. If you know that you're going to start with an intro and you're going to finish with a conclusion, could you write some of that now? Even if it doesn't say the exact things you know it's got to say, or that you need to figure out, could you draft some of it now? Could you start making the slide, like, putting out the right number of slides, putting a title at the beginning, put a conclusion, you know, I need roughly three that are introductions, say, and roughly two that are conclusion or whatever.

How far can you get just from the things you do know? This is really useful to get you moving, especially when you've found it paralyzing to not know what you need to do. Especially when you're feeling like I'm just not making any progress. I'm spinning. How far can you go just from the things that you do know? Once you've made some progress with that, In doing so, you might come up with other things you do know, other things you don't know, by the way. So we keep adding to the lists as we realize things. But once you've made a chunk of progress based on what you do know, we now get to look at your don't know list.

And we get to ask ourselves, Do I actually not know? Or is one of these options just a bit scary and I'm delaying making it? So if we actually know what we need to do is not do this presentation, then we get to think about, okay, what's stopping me making that decision? Who am I worrying about letting down? What do I think I would make it mean about myself if I didn't do this presentation, what's stopping you taking that decision? If it's that you do know what you need to talk about, but you're delaying doing it because it feels like a lot of work or it feels quite complex, how can you support yourself to be able to do it?

So identify the ones where it's like, you know what, this isn't a don't know issue, this is a I'm scared issue or a I'm overwhelmed issue. And then we manage that separately. 

Now identify things where you don't know, but really it's a decision. And this is anything where it's about what order, what to include, all of these things. There's no right answer. There's no magic thesis in the sky that is exactly what you need to be aiming for, and no one's told you exactly what it looks like, so you've got to figure it out. No, you get to decide. 

And one of the things I want all of you to think, and this is a word that comes from PhD criteria, but is relevant across your entire academic career. And that is, you do not need to know what is the right answer, because there is no right answer. Academics are good at Lots of things, but arguing and disagreeing with each other is one of them. There's no right answer. What you need to make is a decision that is defensible. So you need to take a position in your paper, whether it's the argument that you're making or whether it's the order that you're telling it, you need to take a position and you need to take a position that is defensible. That means you could explain why you took it and you could stand by it. 

Now, with most of these, there's probably three different decisions you could take and all of them would be defensible. Cool, pick one. Pick the one that feels the most defensible. Pick the one that feels fun. Pick the one that feels true to you. Whatever it is. But recognize that an awful lot of these don't knows are, I haven't decided. Pick one that you can defend.

And then the third type of item that you might have on your don't know list, are things that you actually don't know. I don't know how to import my transcripts into NVivo. I don't know how to code in R for the task I need to do. Whatever it is, pick your discipline, pick your thing. I don't know how to do that. But if we can get really specific about that, then it becomes super easy to say, okay, how do I find out? Because if nothing else, we're researchers. If I don't know what form I need to fill in to reclaim the expenses that I did at conference, whatever, who does? Where can I find that out? Who could I speak to? Where could I look? Who has done this before? Who could teach me? What options have I got? Where could I find out about those options? 

We get to put our best research pants on and ask ourselves, Okay, if I don't know How do I learn? How do I figure this out? And then, as you gather the information, this then becomes a decision. This then stops being something where I don't know, I'm missing key facts, and becomes, okay, now I've got a bunch of key facts. Bob says I should do it like this. Belinda says I should do it like that. And then we get to pick. We go back to our decision. We get to pick it's defensible. I like it for this reason, this reason, and this reason, I decided not to do the other one because of this reason and this reason let's go 

Now, this then all relates into decision making and I've done a podcast about decision making before. If you haven't checked that one out, highly recommend you go back and look. It's called how to make decisions. I think I have to make decisions you love, that's what it's called. Go back, find that one, but I'm going to take you through the basics now. 

So let's take an example. We're deciding what argument we're going to put forward in our article. So quite a big decision, you'd think. What we get to do is we get to ask ourselves what options are there? What arguments could I plausibly put forward? Because whilst you're saying I don't know what argument I want to make, there's presumably a relatively limited range of arguments that you're likely to make.

So what are your options? It's the first step. Second step is you get to ask yourself, why would I do this one? Pick one of those options and ask yourself why would I do this option? Why wouldn't I do this option? So what are the reasons I would, the reasons I wouldn't. Then look at a different option. What are the reasons I would do this one and the reasons I wouldn't? Try not to think of it as pros and cons. Pros and cons is different, slightly. We're thinking about what would be my reasoning. If I was arguing with somebody that this is why I did it, what reasons would I say? Okay, if I was arguing why I didn't do this other thing, what would the reasons be? 

And you get to do that for each of your options and then what you do is you look at your reasons. You look at the reasons why you would do things and the reasons why you wouldn't do things and you look at all of them and you get to pick which reasons you like best. Maybe you've got an argument. I would, I would make this argument because there's compelling evidence in the data. I would make this argument because, it's also in line with stuff I personally believe. I would make this argument because I think it's a really novel contribution to the literature, and then the reasons for not might be I would not make this argument because it has the potential to be controversial. I would not make this argument because it actually has implications for the second study that I had planned, that maybe I would need to change that now that I've done this one and made this argument. 

And then you get to look at them and say, which reasons do I like better? Do I want to be somebody who makes the compelling argument, who makes the argument that's in line with their beliefs, and who makes an argument that's novel and interesting?

Or do I want to be someone who doesn't do those things because they're worried what other people are going to say? They're worried that it's too controversial. Or, there's no right answer here, do I want to be somebody who protects my own psychological safety at absolute maximum and if it's an argument that is going to make other people uncomfortable or I'm not willing to put myself out there and do that, I will find a way of arguing this that is novel and interesting but is less controversial, for example, and you can translate this out into your own disciplines. 

You get to decide for you in this moment when you're making these decisions, which is the better decision for you. Some of it will depend a little bit on what you want now and what you want in the future. If you're someone who just wants your PhD done, you might choose to make an argument that's straightforward, that's easy to argue, where it's incremental change based on other people's work. So it's novel, but it's building on other people's work so that it's probably going to have a straightforward review process into a nice, comfortable journal and happy days, it's a chapter done. 

If you're somebody who's really pushing for an ambitious career, where you're hoping to get big grant funding as an early career researcher and all these things, maybe you'll push into the more controversial argument. Maybe you'll do something that really stands out that bit more. For example, so you get to bring in your own beliefs, your own preferences, your own ambitions when you're making these decisions.

Now, this is a bit, usually people stop, they make a decision and then that's the end of their process. There is more to this process because what you now do is you decide this was the best decision you ever made. Because the worst thing about making a decision is if in a week's time or a month's time or a year's time, you beat yourself up about making the wrong decision. So you get to decide, I love this structure because of this, this, and this. I love this argument because of this, this, and this. And when your brain is going, oh, this feels a bit difficult, or I'm a bit worried that they're going to hate me or whatever, you go, yeah, but we decided this. I love this decision. I'm really excited about putting something out there that's going to get people talking. People talking is attention and all attention is good for my work. This will increase my profile, even if some people disagree with me. And you remind yourself of all the reasons you chose this one, because there is nothing that is going to diminish your motivation and diminish your wellbeing more than telling yourself you should have done something different in the past because you didn't. Okay? You didn't. And it's a pointless exercise. We can learn from the past, we can decide to do things differently next time, but we can still decide that it was the best thing ever.

Would it have been easier for me and my novel if I'd written it first person in the beginning? Yes. Absolutely. Do I stand by the fact that I decided to write it third person and then that means I had to change it? Yeah, absolutely. Because I think I figured out a lot of stuff writing third person that then made it really easy to write it in first person. I don't think I'd have got there in the same way at least if I'd done the other one first. So I stand by my decision to do it third person first and I absolutely stand by my decision to completely rewrite it afterwards. Was it efficient? No. Was it the right decision for me? Yes, absolutely. 

The other thing you can do is decide how long you're deciding for. So let's say you're deciding on what your argument of a paper is going to be. You might find that there are times when you want to change your mind about it. Okay. But what you don't want to be doing is changing your mind about it every two minutes. Oh, I could argue it this way, write a little bit. Oh no, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll argue it that way, write a few minutes. And going backwards and forwards. And same with the structure. You know, I've had clients who they write it one way, then they change their mind, they write it a different way. And what it means is it never gets to full draft stage. 

So, for example, if we're talking about an argument or we're talking about a structure, you could decide, I'm doing it like this, for these reasons, these are the best reasons ever, and I'm deciding this until the first draft exists. This is what I'm doing, and I will do my best to make it work, until a whole first draft exists. After that, I'm up for change. Once I've got a whole thing I can look at, I could, at that stage, decide, you know what, this argument's not working, I'm gonna change this bit, I'm gonna move that bit. This structure's not working, I'm gonna swap these around, whatever it is. But you decide how long you're deciding for. You might decide I'm going to write it like this until somebody else tells me that I shouldn't. So you might decide that you are going to write it in this structure with this argument until you submit it to your supervisor and after that everything's up for grabs.

Now, always remember you shouldn't just be doing what your supervisor tells you, but that can be a time point at which you'll reconsider. That I'll write it like this, I'll see what my supervisor thinks, and then in collaboration with my supervisor I'll make decisions about whether I'm sticking with this decision or whether we're going to modify it. In collaboration, and what that means is you take into account their ideas, you take into account your reflections that you've had since this, you tie that all together, and then you make a decision that you take responsibility for. So we decide, based on the reasons we like best, we decide that we love our decision, and we decide for how long we're sticking with our decision, when are we going to re evaluate?

 This is the same... Some of you might use the do know, don't know list about other decisions. You might use it about what you're gonna do after your PhD, for example. I don't really do career coaching, other people do, but you might be thinking about what do I know about what I want after my career? What don't I know? How can I find that stuff out? And then you can go into the same decision making process. And you can also set time schedules. You can decide, I've decided that for two years after my PhD, I'm gonna attempt to get a permanent academic job. After that, everything's off the table. We'll see what we can do, but for two years, I'm going to do everything I can to make this happen, for example.

The power of the do know, don't know list is that it helps you really elucidate what you know, what you don't know, and importantly, where you go next. If you ever hear yourself saying, I just don't know what to do next. I don't know what the next step is. Then I'm going to tell you right now what your next step is.

This is what you're going to write on your to do list. If you're saying, I don't know what I do next, what you write on your to do list is decide what I do next. That's your next decision. Okay, and you do it in this process. What are my options? What would be my reasons for doing it? How do I pick one? Pick one. Best ever. Let's go. Okay. You always know what to do next because if nothing else, the next thing you do is make a decision and this do know don't know list will really help you figure out how to take this really stuck feeling of I don't know, and turn it into a bunch of actionable steps so that you can keep moving forward.

Try it out. Let me know what you think. Some of my clients have used it highly successfully. I'd love to hear how you find it and what types of decisions you use it for. If you're signed up for my newsletter, just reply to the email that you'll get about this podcast anyway, and let me know what you've been using it for and how you found it. If you ever have questions, you can also reply to those emails and ask me the questions and I'll try and clarify them in future sessions. I hope today has been useful. It's been a short, sharp tool, sort of a session. Coming up we've got a couple of guests booked in that I'm really excited about. I will tell you more about them soon. And we've got the next installment of the 10 qualities that I think all best supervisors for ourselves should have. So keep an eye out for those too. 

 Make sure you tell your friends about the podcast if you found it useful. I just found myself recommended on Reddit last night, which is very exciting. I don't know how I found it, but I spotted it and that was really exciting. So if that was you, Thank you. If you've been finding this useful and you haven't told anybody yet, why not?

Please let people know. I want to try and help as many PhD students and academics as I can, so help me get the word out there. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week.