3.13 Client Q&A - Motivating yourself in your final year, achieving post-PhD goals, and effective podcast listening

In this episode, I answer three thought-provoking questions from PhD students and graduates:

1. Handling Final-Year Disappointment
   A PhD student asks how to cope with the sense of disappointment that can arise in the final year when you realise your initial goals and ambitions have had to be scaled back. I explain why this is actually a good sign and how to use this understanding to motivate yourself to move forwards.
2. Staying Motivated Post-PhD
   Charlotte, a member of my coaching programme, seeks advice on self-coaching as she works on writing papers post-PhD, with no pressing deadlines or external accountability. I explore ways to find intrinsic motivation and structure this next phase of her academic journey.
3. Making the Most of Podcasts
   Sophie enjoys listening to podcasts while multitasking but struggles with taking notes or fully engaging with the content. I offer tips for integrating podcasts into her routine more effectively to maximise their value.

This episode is packed with practical advice for navigating common challenges in your academic journey and beyond.

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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

Hello and welcome to the PhD life coach podcast. We are doing more client questions this week, where anyone who is a listener, who's on my newsletter, who's one of my members, for example, can submit questions about things they're finding challenging at the moment and I will try and answer them for you. This week I've got three questions that I think are going to resonate loads with all of you. And make sure you stay for the third one because the third one is 100 percent relevant to all of us.

So, first up, have you ever had that sense that your PhD is just not working out quite the way you thought it was going to? Maybe you're in your second, third, more years along and you had all these high hopes at the beginning of your PhD as to what you were going to achieve and what you were going to do, and things are just not quite working out the way you thought they would.

And you're kind of ready to write up, or you're in the process of writing up, and it just all feels a bit disappointing. Well that was the situation of a student that I met at a workshop I ran in London for the Wellcome Trust, which was amazing, really, really able, motivated students, we were talking about career decisions and things like that.

And she asked me afterwards, how do you stay motivated to write your thesis when you're a bit disappointed that you didn't do all the things that you intended to do? And she explained that this was just making it really hard for her to sit down and do the difficult work of writing when she was managing all these frustrations and disappointments with it not looking the way that she had dreamed it would look when she first started.

And I just thought this was such an interesting question and you can hit this kind of disappointment at any stage in your PhD. So don't worry if you're not as far along as she is at the moment, you might still be experiencing this.

Now, I answered it for her there in the workshop, but I thought it would be useful for all of you to hear this answer because she found it really, really beneficial. And that is that you have to remember that the reason things are disappointing or frustrating now is not because your PhD is bad and it's not because you've let yourself down or any of these things that we often tell ourselves it means. 

What it means is that you know more now than you did when you started. When we start our PhDs, we are necessarily optimistic and excited and hopeful. If we weren't, we wouldn't take on a 3, 4,5,6, year project. If we weren't experiencing those sorts of emotions and having those sorts of thoughts, we wouldn't even begin this thing.

 That period running up to the PhD and in the first bits of it, we need to be really hopeful and excited about what we might achieve. We need to be dreaming big about the impact that we'll have and the discoveries that we'll make and all of that stuff, because that's what gets us through the application process, that really uncertain period at the beginning where you don't really know what you're doing. You kind of need to believe that it's going to go somewhere afterwards. 

So, that past you that was hopeful and optimistic was super necessary to get you going on the PhD journey. However, you are now much more informed, you're much more knowledgeable, and you're much more immersed in what you've done.

And that's a wonderful thing, but it has some negative effects as well. One of the negative effects is that we have, by necessity, had to reduce the scope of what we'd hoped to do. We've realized how over hopeful, over optimistic we were at the beginning. We've learned more about the details of the research process and how complicated some things can be. And we've necessarily had to change our project to accommodate that. 

Those are all exactly right. Those are exactly the things that you should be doing as you develop into becoming an independent researcher. Taking big dreams and turning them into something that you can actually achieve and managing the disappointment that that might not be everything you thought, this is a sign that you know so much more, that you have learned so much more during this period, which is a wonderful thing. It just makes you super attuned to any of the flaws and the kind of reduced scope of your work.

The other thing is that you are more immersed in and kind of focused on this piece of research than you ever will be with anything you do in your life again. Because if you go into universities, carry on as a researcher, go into lecturing and all that stuff. You'll have multiple research projects. You'll have your own students. You'll have your teaching. You'll have your leadership, your admin. But while you're doing your PhD, you are fully immersed in this thing. And the downside of that is it also comes super mundane to you. Anything that we do every day, we can take for granted and not realize the wonderful things that we're doing because it's just normal. It's just what we do.

I remember being at a conference once and some students from an American university were like, Oh my God, it's Doug Carroll, your supervisor. Oh my God, you'd introduce us? Because he was quite a big dog in his field at the time. And, I was like What? Him? Doug? Yeah. Fine. Whatever. Come on. I don't understand why this is exciting, but sure, we can talk to him. Because for me, it was completely normal. I mean, don't get me wrong. He was a great mentor and I really enjoyed working with him and all those things.

It's not to criticise him, but it's like, you don't get excited about your own parents, right? You know, your own supervisor. Pretty dull. See him all the time. But! For them, he was this big academic and they were really excited to meet him. Familiarity had made it mundane. 

And the same is true when you talk about research. In the workshops that I run from universities, I always get people at the beginning to tell me about their research. And it all sounds so amazing. It's one of the reasons I love to work with PhD students and academics. You're all doing such cool stuff that brings so much interest to the world or solves big problems. Yet to you it can feel really mundane because you've been doing it for the last three years. 

Now, how does this help? Well, the first thing is to recognize it, because often we think that because we're disappointed and frustrated, it means our PhD is bad. It means that we haven't fulfilled our promise. And I want you to see that it doesn't mean any of that at all.

What it means is that you have hugely progressed since that hopeful, optimistic first year that started off. You know loads more, you've done it so much that it's become mundane, and all of this is exactly how it should be. Final year PhD students are a little bit like older teenagers, where like, they're ready to leave the house, okay?

They're at that stage where their parents are annoying, everything they're doing is annoying, they're ready to move on to the next thing. And that's what final year, whatever age you are, that's what final year PhD students are like. You are ready to move on. So this does feel a bit mundane and a bit just boring and long. Okay, nothing broken here. 

The other perspective that I want to bring to this is the perspective of future you. Because future you is going to know more than you know now. And future you is going to have a perspective on your PhD that you don't have right now. They are going to realize what a big deal it was.

They are going to be so proud of you for completing it. And so all we have to do is look after ourselves in this moment, this moment between the kind of hopes and optimism and dreams of past us and the future perspective where we will look back on this and realize what an achievement it is. We need to look after ourselves here and that means saying things to ourselves that reminds us why it's important, reminds us why we're capable of it, reminds us why we wanted to do this in the first place and really recognize the progress that we're making. Let's not make these worries or concerns into anything they don't need to be. They are just a sign that you are ready to finish your PhD. Let me know if you're, if that resonates with you.

So let's move on. Question two.

We often think that when we finish our PhDs, it's going to be like this wonderful moment of clarity and confidence and suddenly sure that we can take on the world because we've actually done this huge thing that we've been working for all this time. And the reality is the other side of thesis submission, the other side of your viva, you're still the same person.

You might be pleased. You might be happy that you've done this. You might be proud of yourself to some extent, but we then start to worry about other things. We start to worry about what we're doing next, whether we're well set to get a job either within academia or beyond. And I see this in my members.

So some of my members have actually stayed on post PhD for me to support them in that kind of postdoctoral period. And so I got a question from one of my members who is post PhD. She is now a doctor, and she was asking how does she apply all this stuff when she's trying to write up papers so that she can apply for jobs. She wants to be an academic. She doesn't think her CV is quite ready for that yet. And so instead of getting a job at the moment, she's using this time to try and improve her publications. And what she's finding is that without that kind of external accountability, without deadlines set by other people, she's really struggling to get on and complete that piece of work. She's finding herself setting targets and then when the day comes to work on it, talking herself back out of it again. And we've all been there, right? I want you to think about the last time that happened for you. I think it's really, really common, especially in anything where you're trying to work independently.

I have a few tips for this. The first is to really think about what sort of boss you want to be to yourself. So some of you may be familiar with my Be Your Own Best Boss course. There we really talk about how to provide yourself with the support and structure that you need to succeed. So in this sort of a situation where you're trying to work even more independently than you were during your PhD, I would really take some time to sit down and say, Okay.

What do I want this to look like and how can I try and set it up for myself in a way that feels good, makes me want to do this, makes me want to live these days rather than filling it full of I should be doing this but I don't want to. So spending a little bit of time in boss mode, just kind of planning how to make this work, is really useful.

Sometimes this is around time blocking and deciding in advance exactly when you're going to work, but a lot of it is about self talk. If you're spending your time telling yourself that you should have done this before, you should be further along by now, it just becomes this painful thing that nobody actually wants to do.

So we get to decide when we work, what we work on, and how we speak to ourselves about that work. Now, whenever we're trying to motivate ourselves, you know, people tell me they want more motivation so they'll get on with things. And, like to say two things.

One is, one of the best things you can do in the world is learn to work when you're not motivated. And that is that you choose to work because that's what you said you'd do and no other reason. You don't need to want to, you don't need to feel like it. You don't need to have deadlines. You're just doing it because you said you would.

And trying to cultivate a sense that I'm doing this because I wrote it in my diary and I want to be someone who does what she said in her diary can really, really help. We don't want to be kind of pressuring ourselves and kicking ourselves to do it. But just reminding yourself I'm someone who does what they said they'd do can really, really help in this situation.

The other thing is we can try and increase the motivation, right? And what people often do is they either remind themselves of the big picture, you know, I'm doing this because I want to get a job or whatever, or they promise themselves some sort of reward immediately after it. Now I've talked about this in a past episode, but what I would encourage instead is aiming for proximal, intrinsic motivation.

So what do I mean by that? Intrinsic motivation is to do with the enjoyment and motivation by the task itself. So rather than I'm going to complete this piece of work because then I get to spend the evening with my friends, or I'm going to complete this piece of work because it will get me a job, we try and channel a sense that I'm completing this piece of work because I value this piece of work and because I enjoy the process of writing it.

And this is especially true if you want to be an academic, writing these papers is going to be a part of your life for the rest of your career. So we need to channel a sense that we actually like doing this. Because if we don't like doing this, we might want to reconsider that whole academic career thing.

Okay. Now for most of you, I think you do actually like doing it. You just don't like the negative self talk and the judgment and the pressure that comes along with it. So we get to remind ourselves of all that intrinsic motivation. How lucky we are to be able to write this stuff that's about something we care about.

That's about something we chose, for reasons we want to, for the benefits of our own career. And we get to delve in and be an academic and sit at our desk and do our thing. That can be hugely, hugely motivating. So remind yourself of those intrinsic reasons why the actual process of doing this thing is so nice.

And the reason I'm saying proximal rather than distal, distal would be things that are important to you in the future. Proximal are the benefits you get right now. So an equivalent here in exercise is a distal motivator to exercise will be so that you're healthier in old age. Now, I'm getting to an age where that's starting to feel proximal, right?

So for me, that's starting to become a key motivator. But for many of you, it won't be. It's something that's too far in the future to make you want to do something that feels a bit uncomfortable now. A proximal motivator for exercise would be something like, I always feel better when I move my body. It's such a nice sensation to have been outside running and to come back in and be all warm and cozy. The mental health benefits of exercise are another one. I always feel much clearer in my mind after I've exercised, for example. 

So this is where, again, you're reminding yourself of the benefits you're going to get from this immediate piece you're going to do. Oh, I'm going to feel so good when this bit's written. It's going to be so fun to really straighten out what I'm doing in this part of the task. So try and make your motivations proximal and intrinsic.

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.

The final thing to say is, if you are repeatedly telling yourself that you want to do something, and you are not doing it. There is another decision. You can just decide you're not going to do it. If you actually just don't want to write this paper, don't. Apply for jobs without the paper. Will it make it more difficult to get the job? Maybe. But you're not writing it anyway, so you may as well just decide you're not going to. And you're going to put your efforts into applying for jobs and making yourself marketable in other ways. Same for exercise, to be fair. If you're repeatedly telling yourself you should be exercising and you're not exercising, you might as well just not decide to exercise.

Now often we respond to that with horror. It's like, no, but I really want to. It's like, okay, why? Why do we really want to? Then how do we make it happen? But it's when we're in this murky middle where we're definitely not ready to say we're not going to do this thing, but equally we're not doing it either, then it's just unpleasant. You're not getting any of the benefits of doing it. And you're getting all this extra self judgment. Because you're not. So you can just decide not to do it. If you decide to do it, be your own best boss. Structure it. Speak to yourself well. Be proud of yourself when you complete things. Recognise the stuff you are getting done. And chip away and get this done.

And then question three is the one that I promised was relevant to absolutely everyone. And that's because it's about listening to podcasts. I got contacted by one of my regular clients who's finished her PhD and she sent me a message saying, this is going to be a bit meta Vikki, but how would you recommend that people listen to your podcast? Because she likes to listen while she's doing craft or something like that, because she finds that if she's just listening, then she ends up picking up her phone, looking at other things at the same time.

Not offended, Sophie. I get it. I get a bit like that with podcasts too. I'm not very good at just sitting listening either. But then she finds that she doesn't make notes and she feels like she's not necessarily getting maximum use out of the podcast. And so she asked whether I had any tips about how to listen to a podcast.

Now, there's many, many different ways you can do this, but I'm going to give you some tips that I have found useful for me. I have a bunch of podcasts that I listen to regularly. And I think there's a few things that are useful here. The first is don't overthink this. Don't make it more complicated than it needs to be.

I have some podcasts that I listen to because I find them broadly interesting, broadly motivational, and I always end up feeling like I want to get on with things afterwards. Does that mean I implement the exact things they talk about? Often no. Often it's just like, Oh, that's an interesting idea, but I don't actually do it.

But there's something about hearing them talk it through that just puts me in a frame of mind that I like. And for many of you listening to this podcast, that might be it. Maybe you just like listening to me, wittering away, sounding vaguely motivational, making you feel like you can actually do your PhD.

Perfect. If that works for you, that's enough. Do your crafts, walk your dog, listen to me while you're driving, whatever it is. And don't worry too much that you're not implementing everything that I say, if you're still getting benefit from just listening to me witter, okay? Don't overthink it. However, if on occasions you're like, you know what, there are some of these things that I actually want to try out.

I don't want to just be consuming these ideas anymore. I want to actually make sure that I'm trying them and practicing them in my life. And, to be honest, if you want to change your behavior, that's a really, really sensible thing. Then the first thing to say is let's get specific with that. Let's not try and implement everything I talk about in every single episode. I don't implement everything I talk about. I try to, but all at the same time, it's too much for my little brain. I can't implement everything all at once. You definitely can't.

So if you're kind of going, you know, I find Vikki's podcast really useful, but I feel like I want to move to the stage where I implement things. Let's just pick one. One episode. What is the biggest pain point in your life at the moment? What's the one thing that if you could make some progress on that, it would really, really help?

Then, go to my website, thephdlifecoach. com, and go to podcast, and you'll find all of my episodes there. I am soon going to have some better kind of tagging system, but at the moment you can just scroll on through, okay? Find an episode that answers that pinch point, and side note, if you notice that there's no episode that answers your problem, let me know. I want to record that episode. I want it to feel like when you go there, there is everything you need to succeed in your PhDs in academia. So, have a look, find one, and then you've got three different choices of how you consume it. There's video, if that helps on YouTube, there's the podcast version, and there's a full transcript on my website.

So if you are somebody who is better when you're wanting to implement things, better off just reading it, it's right there for you. Word for word transcript of everything I say in the podcast. So just pick one episode, go to the website, consume it in the way that you find best, and then do it. Pick one thing from it that you want to do. 

If this is something you want more support with, make sure you're on my newsletter. I know my client already is on my newsletter, but if any of you aren't, if you're on my newsletter, you get a little summary of the podcast. So you get three take home messages. You get two reflective questions to try out that are connected to that topic. And you get one specific action to take. So if you're a bit like I want to implement from this episode, but even looking at the transcript feels a bit overwhelming, make sure in your newsletter, you will get those week by week. Now, secret for you. I am currently looking at a way to create a repository of all those newsletters and to go back and create them for old episodes so that we end up with like a summary bank of all of those things. It hasn't happened yet. It's the middle of November right now. Who knows whether it will exist by the time you listen to this. If you listen to it live, it does not. But it is on my agenda. So keep an eye out for that because I think it would be super useful.

 My final thing connects back to an episode from a few weeks ago where I talked about using voice notes to kind of capture your ideas. And I tried this one out the other day and it was amazing. A little bit disjointed, but amazing. So I like to listen to podcasts while I walk, because I'm similar to Sophie. I'm not very good at just sitting still and reading these things. But there are sometimes, not necessarily even things that they say that I want to implement, but that while I'm listening to them, it made me think of something. And so what I did the other day, I was listening to a book because I have an author coming up on a future podcast. Uh, he's going to come out in January. I think it is. I recorded it last night. He's amazing. You're going to love it. But I was finishing up listening to his book. And it was making me think of loads of things that I wanted to ask him and talk about. And so what I was doing was I was walking around my village with my headphones in, listening to my book, March, March, March.

And whenever I had something that I wanted to remember, I paused my podcast, I opened my Otter. ai, I whittled into my phone for a minute. Stop, go back to the podcast, do, do, do. It's actually quite similar to how my husband and I listen to podcasts in the car. We'll listen for like three minutes and then one of us will pause it and we'll talk about something.

And then we'll go again and then somebody else will get another idea and we'll press pause. And for anybody else quite annoying. We love it. Um, so that's another way that you can do it, is either having a notebook with you, or using voice notes on your phone, so that as you're listening, even if you're doing crafts or you're walking or whatever, you can just pause and add notes into that. Obviously it doesn't work so well while you're driving, but hopefully having the transcript and the notes in the newsletter will enable you to return to the things that you want to return to.

On that, if you find this podcast useful, I have one request. One teeny tiny request for you. Send it to somebody, find an episode that you think is particularly useful to something that one of your friends has told you they're stressed about and send it to them. Send them and say, I love this podcast.

This will really help you listen to it. Now, call me when you've done it. We'll have a chat about it. Make sure you listen. Or, suggest it for one of your university, like, journal clubs or something like that. Suggest, everyone listen to this episode and then we'll talk about how we can implement it and how it could change the way we do things.

Please, please, please share this. When people listen to the podcast, they tell me so many nice things about it and I just want to make sure it's getting to all the people that could benefit. I really hope today's been useful. I feel like those were three really, really insightful questions. So thank you to the people who sent them in.

If you have questions, there's a bunch of ways you can get them to me. You can send them on Instagram through messaging. I am at the PhD life coach. You can reply to my newsletter, if you are on my newsletter. If you're listening on podcasts, then there's a send Vicki, a question button on all the places you get your podcasts. So you can press that, just send them through. If you do that one, make sure you tell me your name. Cause otherwise I don't get your name. Just let me know. I want to answer any specific challenges that you have at the moment. Let me know what you think of the episode, what things you might be implementing and thank you all so much for listening. 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.