3.08 How to be more patient and realistic (part of the Be Your Own Best Boss series)

If you make unrealistic plans and get impatient that you’re not progressing more quickly, then this is the episode for you! I’m going to give you specific tips about how to be more realistic and more patient so that you can be a better boss to yourself! I’ll talk about when you need to be realistic and patient, what thoughts will help and what feelings, actions and results we can then generate. If you like it, check out the rest of the five part series where I talk about 8 other qualities – compassionate, curious, strategic, ambitious, intentional, resourceful, encouraging and accepting. These all come from my online course, how to be your own best boss, which you can find on my website if you want more support! www.thephdlifecoach.com

****
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

Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This is the final session of my how to be your own best boss kind of mini series that we've been doing here. Regular listeners will know that over the last couple of months, I've had episodes where we talk about all the different qualities that you need to be a good boss to yourself.

So we thought about being Strategic and ambitious and curious and compassionate and all of those things. And today is the final two qualities. And there's a certain irony to this because the two that I have made you wait the longest for are patient and realistic, which are both, I think, really important qualities and today we'll think about why.

Before we get into the details of it though, I want to remind you that these episodes are all part of my Be Your Own Best Boss online course that is available for any of you to purchase. And in this course, we really think about how you can be a better boss to yourself, how you can change the way you speak to yourself, how you can change the way that you organize yourself, that you manage your tasks, that you plan and strategize and review so that you keep all the things that you're already doing well and develop some better habits that will support you to succeed in the future.

Now, most podcast listeners will know by now that I also put this on YouTube. Hi everyone on YouTube, if you're the ones watching this there. I'm going to highly recommend that everybody whips over to YouTube this week because I am going to quickly show you what the be your own best boss program looks like.

So I'm doing the old share screen. Here we go. So in be your own best boss, you get the introduction to the course. You've get this first module. Like I say, this is about being the boss you need. It's got self assessments, figure out what are you doing at the moment that's working and what is holding you back.

It's going to teach you all about the self coaching model, which I talk a lot about in these episodes, how you can use it to coach yourself to achieve your goals. It's going to think about why we need to be compassionate, how we can choose thoughts that are going to serve us and really focus on being the boss we need in our own lives.

We go back to modules. Module two is much more organizational. So here it gets much more pragmatic. I'm giving you specific tools that you can use to organize your time and help you think through why tools that you've discovered in the past don't work just haven't stuck and why they haven't helped you. We think about your dream week. We've got sections in there about how you can start your week that in a way that will set you up for everything else you want to do. And it teaches you, in detail, my role based time management system. which many of you will have heard me talk about here on the podcast before, but this is where I give it to you step by step, including a document you can use, to manage all of your tasks if you want to use the role based time blocking system.

Module three, which I'm clicking onto now on YouTube. You can see it's all about figuring out why you do and don't follow your plans. We think about the difference between boss you, who does the planning and the strategizing, and then about implementer you, who's the one that has to do the work. And we figure out, there's some diagnostic tools in here for you, to figure out, is the problem mostly with the boss version of you and how they're planning and strategizing and decision making, or is the issue more with the implementer version of you, not following those plans? Usually it's a bit of both, but what we do here is it's a whole array of different options.

If the issues with the boss, there's a bunch of different tools you can use. If the issues with the implementer, there's a whole bunch of different tools. So here we're really getting into the kind of nitty gritty of making through, making sure that we follow through. through on the things that we want to do.

Section four, start looking longer term. Here, we're thinking about how we plan our months and how we plan our quarters. Often outside of the kind of university requirements, whether that's your sort of progress reviews or whatever you call them, and your university at your stage of your career, outside of that, people often find it difficult to kind of plan and figure out what systems to use that will actually work. Often we end up just making a bunch of goals, not sticking to them, beating ourselves up next time and then doing it all over again. I'm going to teach you a really specific process in this module that you can use to plan and review your months that takes into account the fact that we're driven by our thoughts and feelings. So instead of just ignoring that, instead of focusing only on what actions we need to take, we're going to think about what thoughts and what feelings we need to have in order to take those actions, in order to achieve our results. 

And then there's also a whole quarterly planning process that takes you through that sort of slightly more macro version, okay, where we think about what do we want to actually exist at the end of the three months? What process things do we want to change at the end of the three months? And then finally, and this is brand new, there is then module five, which covers the stuff that we've done in these past podcast episodes, but in much more detail. So, thinking about the 10 qualities that you need in order to be an effective boss to yourself.

So, it's taking you through, just as I do in these episodes, what we mean by those qualities, in what circumstances they're useful, what thoughts might help you feel useful feelings, what feelings you might want, what actions you might want to take, what results those will help you achieve.

So make sure you check it out. It is the perfect sort of entry level version of the work that I do. If you've been wondering about the membership, things like that, this is a brilliant way to get some self guided stuff. If you think you haven't got time for the membership at the moment, you're not ready for a long term commitment, you can buy this as a one off. You will have it for as long as it exists. If I upgrade it, there'll be additional things added. You'll get all those as they go along. So you can go to my website thephdlifecoach. com and click on the bit about self guided programs and you'll find the Be Your Own Best Boss program.

So that's where this all comes from. It's all part of that program which I think is like the foundations of how to be a successful PhD student and academic. By the way, if you've been wondering about the membership and think you might jump into the membership, you get that for free in the membership. If you're a bit on the fence and you're thinking, oh do I buy that or do I go into the membership, get this with the membership as well. Plus all my other self paced courses too.

Anyway, that's enough about that. Let's get on to the last two qualities that I want to discuss. So, realistic. is quality number nine. And this sounds like a funny one because often, you know, I've talked to you about being more ambitious, about setting your sights high, believing you can achieve all the things you want to achieve. And I stand by that, absolutely. But we also need to be realistic too. People listening to this will laugh. This is one I've had to really, really develop and I still have to actively manage and actively kind of keep an eye on. This is probably the one I find hardest because there is a substantial chunk of my brain that believes that if I just get on with it, I should be able to do all the things. It's a kind of mix of delusion, arrogance, and ADHD. Who knows? But anyway, so I have actively channeled my realistic boss. And what we're really thinking about here is being realistic in terms of the scope of projects, for example. So if you're designing a research project, what will the scope of that be? What's in, what's out? And how can you make sure that you are realistic about that? We can be realistic about quality. of the work that we're producing. Sometimes, particularly quality of first drafts, right? A lot of my clients have unbelievably high expectations of how something should sound when it comes out of their head in ways that are completely unrealistic at any stage of an academic career, let alone towards the beginnings of it.

So, realistic about the quality of the work that we produce. We need to be realistic about the amount of work we can do, particularly in relatively short periods of time. We tend to underestimate what we can achieve over long periods of time and overestimate what we can get done today.

If any of you have ever had that thing where you've got like, I don't know, a weekend where you're gonna work or, for me, it was a train journey a couple of weeks ago. I was convinced I was going to sort my entire life out on that train. Uh, being realistic about what you can do in short periods of time. There's also being realistic about how much recognition and reward and praise and reassurance we can expect to get from other people.

Often people think that if I was doing well, people would tell me that all the time. If I was doing well, I'd win awards. If I was doing well, I'd get recognized for my skills. And that's simply not true. Often there's a limited number of places where you can get recognition and reassurance. And often the people that divvy it out, your supervisors, your bosses, your heads of department, etc, are often just really busy and doing that's not necessarily the top of their priority. So we get to be realistic about those things too. 

We also have to be realistic about the scale of our impact. So often we go into academia because of the impact we want to have on the world, whether that's kind of intellectually or practically, theoretically, whatever it is. But then we realize that we're just a tiny cog in a big machine and sometimes it can be hard to see how this little bit of work that you're doing is going to lead to something meaningful in the future.

There's that saying that originally comes from like social action. I think it was Margaret Mead saying that never underestimate the impact of committed people making small actions. It's the only thing that's ever changed the world. That's a horribly paraphrased version, but you know the one I mean. The same is true in academia. Committed people making a series of small academic realizations is also how the vast majority of huge leaps of understanding have ever happened. So being realistic that we're a small part doesn't have to take away from the ambition that we can also have for the change we want to be in the world. 

So what circumstances is it useful to be realistic? I think it's useful to be realistic when we're planning studies, when we're planning our schedules, when we're submitting stuff or entering stuff. So if we're submitting grants or papers or entering competitions, you can be realistic about your chances of winning while also being ambitious about how much you will get out of participating and attempting to win. 

Okay? So this is how I see realistic and ambitious living next to each other. Winning something, being awarded something, whether it's a grant or a paper acceptance, or whatever is out of your control, somebody else is making that decision. So we get to be realistic about how likely that is to happen. But the bit that's in our control is how much we get out of it. And we can be as ambitious as we want for how much we will learn through this process.

The fourth circumstance I can think of at the moment where it's useful to be realistic, is when we're judging what we've done that day. One thing I've noticed in myself and in loads and loads of my membership clients, my one to one clients, is that they, no matter how much they've done in a day, they get to the end of the day and think, oh, I didn't get done everything I would have liked. Now, in reality, everything they would have liked was an unrealistic amount of stuff. Hopefully made a little bit better if they'd been realistic in the morning. But regardless, if at the end of the day, we're unrealistic about what it was reasonable to have done today, then we end up beating ourselves up and being really critical of ourselves, or we can, when we're thinking, ah, you should have done more. If we can be more realistic, kind of goes along with compassion, I guess, but be more realistic when we look back and review about what was it reasonable that I could have got done, then we can also recognize much more effectively what we have done. So those are the sorts of circumstances, the sort of situations in which I think it's useful to be realistic.

The thoughts that I think help are things like, I can do what I can do. You know, it sounds very pragmatic. It's like, yeah, I'll do what I can do. I have this amount of time. I have that much stuff. I'll get done what I can get done. I like to remind myself that I'm part of the jigsaw. You know, I would love to help every PhD student, every academic in the world to enjoy their careers more and get the stuff done that they want to get done without sacrificing their health and well being. I'd love to help every single person. But I also know I'm only a small part of the jigsaw of people who are looking after PhD students and academics.

And thank goodness, because realistically, I can't do it for absolutely everybody. So thank goodness I'm part of a jigsaw. So thoughts that help. I am part of a whole jigsaw of people that are trying to achieve this. And I value my bit of the jigsaw and I'm grateful for all the other pieces. 

An old favorite of mine that you will have heard me talk about before, but one step at a time. When you're being realistic about things, you can see that you don't have to and indeed can't do all the things at once, but actually you can see realistically I can do this element now. And I'll do that element next.

Another thought I like, particularly in those situations where we're being realistic about whether we're going to get the job or the promotion or the award, is this is worth doing regardless. And that's a question I want you to ask yourself while we're being realistic, is Is doing this thing only useful if I win or get the promotion? Or actually, could it be useful? Can I realistically expect it to be useful to go through the process? And if you've gone through that decision making and you've decided, you know what, yeah, I am doing this, then you can remind yourself, this is worth doing regardless of the outcome.

This final one is, It is a thought. It's also something that I saw somebody talk about on Instagram, actually, and I can't remember who, so I'm not going to be able to credit, all apologies to them. Cite your sources, people. But I really liked it, and so I wanted to share it with you guys, which is that your best is what you can do without sacrificing your health and well being within the time that you give the task.

I'm going to say that again. Your best is what you can achieve in the time you give it without sacrificing your health and wellbeing. I would really encourage you all to sit on that thought and to really kind of ponder, because so often people beat themselves up. This isn't the best I could do. I could do this better if I have more time. Of course you could. But when we're being realistic, when we're being realistic bosses to ourselves, the version of best we're looking for is the best you can do in these conditions. And the best you can do in these conditions has boundaries around it. It has time boundaries around it. It has effort boundaries around it. And it absolutely should have boundaries around it in terms of, not eating into your health and well being, whether that's by stressing you out, by going into your relaxation time, your sleep time, whatever, your best is what you can do within the time you allocate the task without sacrificing your health and well being.

And we've actually, here's a secret for you, I haven't told anybody. And I'm going to see if you can guess. In fact, you can message me on Instagram or through my website or whatever, my newsletter, if you can guess. I have got a author coming on to talk about their book. It's not a PhD book. It's a, like, out there in the big wide world for all sorts of people book that is about this very notion of how much health and well being you shouldn't sacrifice in order to achieve. See if you can identify what it might be. I'm really excited. I was reading it on a train and I just decided to message him and he said yes. So I'm really excited. That will be coming soon. See if you can work it out. 

Anyway, so we're thinking these thoughts. I can only do what I can do. This is one, my piece of the jigsaw and I'm grateful for the rest of the jigsaw. We can do this one step at a time. This is worth doing regardless of the outcome. And I know what my best actually is. And when we think those thoughts regularly, we're likely to experience feelings like patient, calm, and determined. And when we experience those, and maybe even some pride in what we've already achieved. We're much more likely to focus on what we can do instead of what we can't do. To make progress without getting distracted, to work on through, make realistic plans and to see that longer journey. And when we do those things, we get done what is worth doing.

Quick interjection. If you're finding today's session useful, but you're driving or walking the dog or doing the dishes, I want you to do one thing for me after you've finished. Go to my website, theasyourlifecoach. com and sign up for my newsletter. We all know that we listen to podcasts and we think, Oh, this is really, really useful.

I should do that. And then we don't end up doing it. My newsletter is designed specifically to help you make sure you actually use the stuff that you hear here. So every week you'll get a quick summary of the podcast. You'll get some reflective questions and you'll get one action that you can take immediately.

To start implementing the things we've talked about. My newsletter community also have access to one session a month of online group coaching, which is completely free, but you have to be on the email list to get access. They're also the first to hear when there's spaces on my one to one coaching, or when there are other programs and workshops that you can get involved with.

So after you've listened, or even right now, make sure you go and sign up. 

I'm going to move rapidly on to "patient" because I feel like patient is very related to realistic. Because I think we can't be realistic if we're not being patient as well. Because part of what stops us being realistic is this kind of scurrying towards I must achieve things immediately. But for me, patient is about being willing to take time over something. Willing to do something for a long time that feels difficult or that maybe you're not good at at the moment you're doing it. Again, this is one I struggle with. I, um, I love a new hobby, as many of you will know. I also expect to be good at a hobby immediately. I'm not good at most of my hobbies, but I do struggle to remember that I have to go through a learning process just like everybody else and that's part of patience, is being patient with yourself that you're going to take time to learn things. 

So part of being patient is tolerating that discomfort, is believing that if you give it time, if you put in effort, that those skills will develop. It's seeing that longer picture that we talked about with realistic and it's appreciating where you're at because one of the best ways to be patient is to be enjoying whatever stage you're at at the moment rather than quite such a hurry to get over there. And I think it's useful to be patient when you've got long term goals, whether that's completing your PhD, completing a grant, whatever level we're talking about. It's useful when we're doing painstaking work. I remember my laboratory days where you'd be pipetting for hours and waiting for incubations and all that fun stuff. Or when I was trying to recruit human participants to take part in my studies and it felt like it would take forever to get as many as I needed, or when I was getting people to do questionnaires.

All these things are long and painstaking. In fact, I'm not even going to talk about the cardiovascular analysis I used to do. That took hours. Clicking on the most old fashioned computer you've ever seen. Anyone who's doing their PhD now, who's 22, 23, whatever, you would be shocked if you saw the state of the tech that I was using to do this back in the day, being patient with that sort of painstaking work, repetitive work.

And it's important to be patient when you see other people achieving things that you haven't achieved yet. Whether that's submission of articles, getting promoted, finishing their PhDs, any of those things. Often seeing other people ahead, in inverted commas, of us, can really test our patience because we're like, why aren't we there? But it's those moments where it's so important to be patient and to keep our eyes on our own journey. 

So what thoughts help me feel patient? I'm doing this for a reason, remembering why. This is worth the time, and something I think about, it's okay that this is taking me longer, because often I think we think it's a problem when something takes a long time, and when it's boring and laborious. But actually sometimes what can help us feel more patient is telling ourselves, you know what, this, this is how long it takes. And this is okay. It's okay that it takes this long. It's okay that other people have done stuff faster. But this is the pace I'm doing it and this is okay. And if we can think those, we're going to feel pretty similar to when we were talking about those realistic thoughts. We're going to feel patient and calm and determined and willing. Willing is one of my favorite emotions that you may have heard me say it before. Willing to do the boring thing, willing to wait for the payoff at the end. We're willing to do the boring cardiovascular analysis then we're so much more likely to take that laborious action.

So we're more likely to keep doing the thing. We're more likely to make it worth the time we're putting into it. Cause often when we're impatient, we do it badly and then we have to come back to it, or we procrastinate it, in which case it takes even longer. in the long run. 

When we're thinking these patient thoughts, we're also less likely to criticize ourselves. Because when we're in a hurry, when we're impatient, we're often telling ourselves, you should be able to do this faster. It means something bad about you that you can't do this faster. Everyone else could do this quicker. This shouldn't be this difficult. It shouldn't take this long. When often the truth is it, it just does take this long. And that's okay. And therefore when we can remember that, we're much less likely to whip up stories about how it means that we're not good enough. So this is an action that we're less likely to take when we're patient.

And just as with realistic, we're much more likely, if we take all those actions, we don't beat ourselves up, we make it worth the time, we get on and do it, we keep doing it regularly, we're much more likely to achieve our important goals. So that is a pretty whistle stop tour through why patient and realistic are such important qualities to generate in our own bosses to ourselves.

As I said, some of these, when I look back over the 10 I've discussed with you guys, some of these I've always been pretty good at, strategic and ambitious, pretty good at those the whole way through my career. I've always been quite curious . Compassionate has taken a little bit of time, but I'm a lot, lot better at it. Realistic and patient, I'm still working on. Even in this business, I want every single one of you, I get like a thousand downloads a week at the moment, I want every single one of you to buy my Be Your Own Best Boss program because I know how much it will help you. And I'm a little bit impatient about making that happen.

But I know that I am much more likely to keep supporting you guys and to keep producing more self paced courses for you and keep supporting all my members and everything else when I am realistic and patient for these things to come. You guys will find me at exactly the moment you need me. You will find this course at exactly the moment you need it. And I trust, and I keep reminding myself to trust, that you guys will make that decision when it's the right decision for you. But do have a look at it, because I think it would really help. And the little impatient part of my brain wants you to get that help. 

Let me know what you think of this whole series. Also let me know what you're struggling with at the moment. I've got some more client Q& A's coming up over the next couple of weeks, and I'm looking for either questions or just things you're finding difficult at the moment that maybe you don't know where to get support for. Let me know, either message me through Instagram or reply to my newsletter, which you can sign up for on my website as well. And I'll answer it in a future podcast episode and it'll be amazing. Anyway, all so much for listening. I hope you found that useful 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.