3.10 How to go from idea overload to clarity

I don’t know about you but my brain has so many ideas and thoughts of things I should do, shouldn’t do, mustn’t forget, want to change, or need to make a decision about. I needed a system to get them out of my head but where I knew I would come back to them. In this episode, I’m sharing a system I’ve been testing to help capture and crucially organise and act on ideas more effectively. This process is all about easing mental overload, holding onto those fleeting insights, and spotting patterns in our thinking to boost clarity and problem-solving. I’m still experimenting at the moment, so I’d love to hear your feedback and ideas—perhaps there are tweaks that could make this even more useful for researchers and PhD students!

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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.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. This week I'm going to share with you something that is so hot off the press. I can't even guarantee that it works long term, that I'm going to keep doing this for ages, but I'm so excited about it and it's potential that I'm going to share it with you guys today. The other bonus of me doing that is you can tell me whether you do anything like this and whether there are things that I should know about that will make it even better.

So, with that mysterious start, I want to tell you the problem that I'm trying to solve. I have a brain, as many of you know, that comes up with far too many ideas. Tries to think everything through, usually inside my head, and kind of seeing all the connections between the different things, but I can't decide that until I've decided this, and what if I did that, and da da da.

And, I am blessed with a memory that works very well for exams, but very badly for keeping track of these multitude of ideas and thoughts, and kind of ponderings. And I've always told myself and other people have told me that I should journal, that it would be good for me to journal, that I would slow down and record my ideas and think them through and all of those things.

In fact, the whole self coaching model that I use in my coaching, in my membership program starts with a thought download where you write about what you're thinking. Yet, I have always struggled to build this into anything close to, not even a routine, but anything close to even vague consistency. Like, every few months I'll think, oh yeah, I should probably journal, that'd be nice, do it for a little bit, and then don't.

And I'm past the beating myself up for that, but it has always made me wonder why that is. And whilst I do buy into the idea that it's the people that struggle with journaling or with meditation who need it the most, I also feel like there's only so many things in my life at a time that I can consciously really try and work on when they don't feel very natural to me and journaling has never come to the top of that list.

I do have some hilarious teenage diaries. Maybe one day I will tell you about some of the junk I wrote when I was 16. I know my sister listens to this, one of them, and she's read quite a few of these diaries and will concur. They're hilarious. But anyway, enough of that. So, I've always struggled with journaling and that sort of thing, and I also have a habit still where when my mind is racing, I put on some form of content to calm it down.

Now for some of you, especially if you are neurotypical, you don't have problems with racing thoughts particularly, you aren't anxious sometimes, any of those things, that might sound really weird to you. Why, if you've got too much going on in your head, would you put on more stuff to listen to?

I find, generally, that when I've got too many thoughts going around in my head and they're not particularly, you know, I don't suffer with anxiety. They're not particularly, like, intrusive thoughts. It's just like, oh, what about this? And I remember that. Like, whizzing rather than anxious thoughts. Um, I find if I put on a podcast or a TV show or something, then it gives my brain one thing to think about.

And that's fine. I don't mind that in small doses, but I have realized for quite a while now that I'm probably plowing too many things into my head. And especially when I think listening to podcasts that are telling me the sort of exercise I should be doing and the sorts of things I should be doing in my business and the sorts of things I should be doing in my coaching and all of these things. It becomes, I am still, even if it quietens my brain down in the moment, I am still just filing stuff on top of stuff. And so I was thinking about all of this, and I was thinking what would be useful.

And I was thinking, I even got myself a little notebook out. I didn't buy a new notebook. Good, Vikki. I got a notebook I already had. And I did one day where I was writing down what's in my thoughts. And even having done that, I was like, I'm not going to stick to this. I know I'm not. Because for me the moments where I most need to do this are the moments where I am least likely to have my notebook with me, the right notebook with me, and where I'm least likely to want to slow my brain down to write it out.

And so I was thinking, well, what would be better? And two things kind of conspired to put an idea in my head. The first is that I just recorded a podcast with a woman called Dr. Jessica Parker, who runs an AI company. And her company is about feedback on writing. The podcast is going to come out the week after this, um, so do keep an eye out for that. It's a bumper episode. It's like an hour and a bit's chat. Um, she's brilliant, really, really interesting. I'm a bit of a skeptic about a lot of uses of AI, so we had really, really good discussion. She's really sensible and interesting. Anyway, so I'd had that stuff in my head.

I was also very aware that for various other reasons I'd started paying a subscription to Otter. ai because I thought it might be useful in transcribing some of my coaching sessions and I hadn't really implemented it. A few of my clients hadn't been interested and then I just kind of hadn't carried it on. And I had also in the back of my mind that I should probably cancel my subscription. It's not loads of money, but I should probably cancel my subscription if I'm not going to use it. And both of those [00:06:00] things bumped into my mind while I was thinking about this problem of trying to capture my thoughts.

And I realized that when I very first purchased Otter. ai, they had this Do you call it a widget where you get like a big icon on your iPhone? I don't know. I think it's a widget, that kind of thing. Anyway, like a big icon that's like the size of four of the usual ones that puts you straight into its record and transcribe function. So you can just press that, do a little voice note, stop, and it will transcribe Otter. ai system. I thought to myself, I wonder, now that would be a really interesting way of just wittering away whatever is on my mind. into something where I can then look at it later. Because that's my other problem with journaling, is that I never had a system for going back and looking at it, for collating it into something else.

I am a good typist, but I didn't like typing journals. It didn't feel proper somehow, even though I don't actually believe that. And I didn't like the idea of just emptying my brain never to see it again. Then at the same time, you guys are getting like a proper insight into the ridiculous loops my brain goes through, but this is good.

You're seeing my thoughts in action. Um, then I was also thinking about my morning routines and I'm in a perpetual search for morning routines that feel authentic and easy, but also move me towards my goals. And I quite enjoy, I don't get stressed about it, but I quite enjoy sort of experimenting with different things.

And just by chance, the day after I had been wittering some stuff into Otter. ai, I was making lots of decisions, by the way, about next year. So thinking about what's going to happen in my membership, some exciting, I'm going to say the word festival type things. I'm going to say online festival "situs".

Um, I'm starting planning for all of that stuff. And so I was on my phone. I was like, wittering into my Otter AI like, this is so good. I can really kind of talk things through, just chuck it all out there. It was great. And then a couple more times that day, I suddenly had an idea or something that I wanted to remember to do.

So I whipped out my phone, voice note, witter, witter, witter. Happy days. The next morning, I thought, you know what would be amazing? Would be actually just to start my day, instead of filling my head with social media, which unfortunately is how I usually start my days, I could start my day by reading through yesterday's thoughts and trying to consolidate them into something that looks a little bit more summarized. That looks a little bit more kind of processed, not necessarily decided on, but where you sort of spot themes, clarify ideas. If there was anything that was a don't forget, I could shift over to my to do list, that sort of thing. And I did it. And it was amazing. And then, I was wittering away the next day, into my Otter AI, happy days, all good. And then the next day, when I was processing those thoughts, I processed them into the summary document from the day before.

And it was like, Oh, this is so good. Cause I could already see how I was starting to reconcile some of the things that I'd wittered about the day before and other places where I'd added things that now came together and made more sense and places where I still needed to make decisions. And so I kind of created like themed categories of the things I was talking about and just shuffling it out like that was just an amazing way to start my day. I just loved it. I was so energized by it. It was like, this is something I'll actually at the moment, at least, look forward to doing it. Who knows? Maybe the novelty will wear off and I won't want to anymore. But the good thing is, if you miss a day, they're all still there.

It's just going to take a little bit more processing. So, what types of things did I witter about? I wittered about ideas. Um, so, ooh, we could do this, type things. I wittered about stuff I wasn't yet clear on. So, I was making some decisions about what I might focus on in which parts of the year next year.

Really important process, by the way. Sometimes it was things I just wanted to remember. Sometimes it was where I'd noticed a connection between things that I hadn't thought about before, or I'd remembered something that I thought about a while ago, but that I hadn't recorded anywhere. So it was those sorts of things.

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I also want it, and I haven't used it for this so far, but I also want it to be where I can say, like, my thoughts and feelings. Where I can say, I'm feeling really stressed about this, where I'm worrying about that, and I'm scared that people will think this and that kind of more. [00:12:00] Like, emotion dumping. I want to put that stuff in there too.

And my goal at the moment, and from what I'm about to say, you are going to see quite how new in this process we are, what I want to do is then on a Monday morning look at my summarised notes from last week and kind of consolidate it into something that leads me into my action plan for the next week.

So some of it will be, yeah, that's an idea. Put that on the future idea pile, but sort of work it through into something that then informs the weekly meeting that I already have with myself. Now, if you haven't listened to that episode, I have an episode where we talk about having a meeting with yourself on a Monday.

It was in collaboration with one of my old clients, Marie, and she talks about the way she does it, I talk about the way I do it. And even though I've modified it a little bit since then, how I do it, I think you'll find it really, really useful. So do make sure you go back and check that one out.

I want to build these documents into that Monday morning. And even just in this short amount of time that I've been doing this, I've already found that sometimes I look at a note and I'm like, I don't even remember saying that, so yes, excellent, I'm so glad I recorded that. And then in time, as these build up, many of you will know I have a monthly review process and a quarterly review process.

And I feel ridiculously smug telling you that because I've always wanted to have a process like that. And I've never, ever, ever stuck to it in my past. But I now have a process that I love, that I actively look forward to. And I actually teach it in my Be Your Own Best Boss online course that is available to buy. If you're already in my membership, check it out. It's module four, I think it is and everyone in the membership has free access to it. So make sure you have a look. What I want to do over time is figure out how I'm going to use these documents then in their kind of shrunk down again, shrunk down again form to really like inform my monthly and quarterly review process.

 I hope you can see this is something that I'm super excited about, but that I'm also at the kind of early stages of developing. I would love to know whether this is something that any of you guys do already. 

Before I invite that, there are a few kind of cautions I want to put around it. The first is that I am consciously keeping this super simple. I am aware that there is a concept out there called Second Brain that was developed by Tiago Forte. That is a much more complete system where it's about all the knowledge that you take in.

I am consciously not making this a note taking system, where I'm going to try and record everything that I ever learn or any of those things. This is not a full Second Brain. Could it become that in time? I don't know. Possibly. I'm aware that I'm somebody who has a tendency to overcomplicate and a tendency to want the perfect system right away.

The wiser and more experienced version of me, though, knows the best way for me to do these things and to develop these things is to start with the real basics, embed that in my practice, and then look at ways to extend it or automate it or any of those things in the future. So if you're going to tell me that it sounds like these, like a commonplace book or a Second Brain system or, um, Zettelkasten and Obsidian and all these things, thank you.

Please do let me know how you use that. I am not looking for those tools at the moment. This is not a knowledge management system for me, and I definitely don't want to use this to automate these processes. I am very consciously using the transcript that I get from Otter. ai, not the summary, because I want to filter it through my priorities, my brain and my thoughts, and not just sort of accept what Otter. ai is presenting to me as the interesting things. I want to choose the interesting things for myself. So who knows in due course, but at the moment that feels really, really important to me. 

There is an example of where I've done this before. So many of you will know that I developed my role based time management system, and I developed an Excel file to manage my tasks to use within that role based time management system.

You can look up the, there's a whole podcast episode about how to use it. Again, if you have my Be Your Own Best Boss program, or you're a member, you have access to how to do that in that course, and I developed a Google Sheet that I used to manage my tasks in that context. In fact, if you're on my newsletter and you message me, I can send you a copy of that Google sheet. It's a great place to start with all of that stuff. What I really resisted the temptation to do at the time was to find some fancy app or program or whatever that would do it in like a pretty format.

I was like, nope, Excel, print it out. Happy days. That works. I've now, having been using that for over a year, I now have found a task management system that I now put it into instead, but all the principles are exactly the same as what I developed in that Excel. And starting with that basic system is I believe why my task management system now works.

 The only reason I changed it over was because I'm now collaborating with somebody. I have an assistant that helps me with some of my administrative work and we needed a way to, have tasks that we could both access them in a meaningful way. And she [00:18:00] uses ClickUp and that is what I've started using too.

And I am loving it, but I am loving it because I know exactly how I want to set it up because I want to set it up exactly the way I was able to use the Excel document that I used initially. So I guess today's episode has got two take homes really. One, here's a fun and exciting thing that you can experiment with alongside me. You can tell me how you find it, how you're modifying it, so that we can learn together better ways to capture and straighten out the thoughts that whizz around in our heads. And two, as a reminder, that sometimes when we're trying to solve these problems, the simplest, easiest way of doing it is King.

Here, literally all I'm doing, talking into an app. Next day, take those transcripts, turn them into something that vaguely makes sense. Takes me about 20 minutes while I'm having a cup of tea in the morning. And so far it's been amazing. Let me know what you think about any of that stuff, or if there's any problems that you've come up with a sort of quick and dirty solution for that's actually working for you really well. Who knows, maybe I will even feature it in a future podcast. 

This has been one of the more kind of pragmatic episodes that I've done recently where it's a simple tool. I try and mix these in with the more coaching y thought work type episodes, as well as the guests and the client Q and A's.

The one I haven't done for a while that I want to do is another coaching one. So if any of you would like an hour's free coaching in exchange for it being available on the podcast for other people to listen to. Get in touch. I would love to coach you on any issue that you think would be relevant to my audience of PhD students and academics.

I keep saying get in touch. The best ways to do that is to sign up to my newsletter and then you can reply to those or you can contact me through Instagram messaging. I am at the PhD life coach. Keep sending me any challenges for my client Q and A's and let me know what you think of this episode.

Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next week. 

Thank you for listening to the PhD life coach podcast. If you liked this episode, please tell your friends, your colleagues, and your universities. I'd appreciate it if you took the time to like, leave a review, give me stars, stickers, and all that general approval as well. If you'd like to find out more about working with me, either for yourself or for people at your university, please check out my website at thephdlifecoach.

com. You can also sign up to hear more about my free group coaching sessions for PhD students and academics. See you next time.