3.23 Why what you do matters (and when it doesn’t)

Do you ever wonder why you’re even doing this? Whether your research actually matters and whether the world actually cares? In this episode I’m telling you exactly why I believe your work matters, no matter what you’re researching. I’ll also tell you what bits (that we often worry about) don’t matter! This episode is designed to listen to whenever you need it, so make sure you save it somewhere for those days when you’re struggling!

Links I refer to in this episode 

What to do when you want more reassurance

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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. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach podcast. I am here today to tell you one thing, just one thing, and that is that what you do matters. So often we sit here in our academic careers, doing our PhD, whatever level we're at, feeling like no one even cares about anything we're doing.

Hardly anybody's going to read it anyway. What impact will this ever actually have in the world? And why did I sign up in the first place? If you're feeling like that, it's totally normal. We all go through those stages. And that's why I want to remind you that those things are not objective truths. Those things are stories we tell ourselves when things are feeling difficult and when we've forgotten why we're doing what we're doing.

The work you do is important, regardless of what you're researching. Sometimes I have clients who say, oh, but you know, if I was researching for a cure for cancer, or I was researching about establishing peace in the Middle East or whatever. If I was researching those things, it would matter, but who cares about my little bit of literature? Who cares about my little bit of history, but I want you to know that these doubts happen no matter what you're researching.

I have clients who are researching those exact things, those things that seem so obviously valuable and they still feel often like a tiny piece in a huge jigsaw that they have no idea whether it will work anyway. The discipline that you are studying within and the topic you are studying does not inherently make you sure that your research is valuable. We have those doubts across all disciplines, all research areas.

But what you do is valuable because you're a small piece in a massive jigsaw. Because you are creating and producing one small piece of a jigsaw that nobody else would have produced in the way that you're producing them. But we don't know how it's going to fit together in the future. It's not like there's an actual jigsaw where all the pieces are kind of preconceived.

You're creating a you shaped jigsaw piece, a piece of this giant puzzle that we don't know where it's gonna go. And that means we can't be sure how much impact it will have in the future, but equally we can't be sure that it won't. 

And sometimes it's the most unusual obscure bits that capture people's imagination the most. Certainly when I ask clients in my workshops to share what they're researching on, sometimes it's the stuff that I would never have thought about. I still remember a student from, its gotta be 15, 20 years ago, who was researching the history of pantomime, and I just thought that was the most fascinating thing.

Those of you who aren't in the UK, that may not be so relevant for you, but for me, pantomime is such a huge part of being a child in the UK. And the fact that most of us don't know anything about where it came from and how it developed, I just think it's fascinating. These are the things that will be in museums in the future. These are the things that will be in a book on somebody's bookshelf that they picked up just because it looked cool when they were wandering around a bookshop when they're not meant to be spending any money. The things you do are important. 

The approach that you take is important. The fact that we have hundreds of thousands of people out there doing PhDs, who are learning how to take huge amounts of disparate information, often contradictory information that's arguing with each other, and to turn it into a meaningful argument. The world needs that. The world needs to be able to understand the nuances between different arguments, to understand that there isn't right and wrong, that there's a whole load of grey in between, and that we can make evidence based arguments for where we sit on that nuanced continuum.

The world needs those skills. The world needs the skills that you are developing. The world needs people that can manage this enormous unmanageable amount of information and turn it into something coherent so that other people can learn from it who haven't got your skills. The world needs what you do.

The world needs people that can define a huge project, decide what it is, and make it happen. The world needs those people. The world needs people who have creativity and insight and who can stretch our knowledge beyond where it is at the moment. If you feel like you don't know enough, it's because you are literally at the edges of human knowledge.

That is what you're doing when you do a PhD. When you work in academia, you are meant to not know enough. Because that is what makes you read the next bit and to write the next bit and to understand the next bit. We need people who can operate in that sort of uncertainty and still make it happen. The world needs your research and the world needs you.

Now I said in this episode I was going to tell you one thing and that that's what you do matters, but I'm going to tell you one more thing too. And that's that the stuff you do sometimes doesn't matter. Now, that might sound like a massive contradiction, but so many of my clients flip from everything I do is completely pointless and no one cares to, I have to get this exactly right in exactly the ways it needs to be done or else I'm a failure.

And that's why the second half of this is to remind you that so much of what you do doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you tell the story in this order or that order, as long as it tells a coherent story. It doesn't matter whether you include this article or that article or this quote or that quote, as long as you can justify why you've included it or why you've left it out. It doesn't matter whether you take a quantitative approach or a qualitative approach or what exact measure you use, as long as you can justify why you did and you only interpret within the realms of what you did.

A lot of the decisions that you're getting het up about don't matter that much. You have to have a good reason to choose it. You have to be able to defend it. You have to understand the weaknesses of the choice that you made. And other than that, it doesn't matter. What is important is that you move this research forward, that you develop the skills that you need to push this piece of research forward.

That's all that matters. And that means learning to sit in that uncertainty and move forward anyway. Learning either to be comfortable with the fact that you're not quite sure where you're going next, or to be okay with being uncomfortable.

The tiny things that you are stressing about probably don't matter. But the research that you do, the fact that you're doing a PhD, the fact that you're having an academic career, those things matter. Go do them. And this episode is specifically designed to be short and for you to come back to it whenever you need it.

So save it, send it to your friends who need to hear it right now. You matter. Your research matters. The little things you're worrying about probably don't. Let's just crack on and get this research out into the world where it can have the impact and bring the joy and the interest and the intrigue that it deserves.

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.