3.30 How to make your week more effective

If you start your weeks strong but usually end disappointed, then this episode is for you! I’m going to be sharing how everything improved for me when I separated “boss me” from “implementer me” and used that idea to understand why I felt so frustrated at the end of the week. I’ll identify the most common issues so you can see which resonate most with you and give you some specific ideas to try out this week! 

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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

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.

Transcript

Hello welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I've got a question for you. How do you usually feel on Friday afternoons or whatever day of the week you typically stop work? I spent years and years, not gonna lie, probably 20 years finishing the week, mostly feeling somewhere between exhausted and disappointed. That I'd somehow been running around all week doing loads of things, yet not finishing any of the things or many of the things, certainly not all of the things that I intended to do, and not really able to see why. Because at the start of the week, it had been a cunning plan. It had definitely been a cunning plan, and then somehow by the end of the week, it hadn't happened. 

And ugh, I used to be baffled, frustrated, disappointed. I used to just walk away. It would be Friday afternoon, Friday evening, and it'd be like, you know what? Laptop shut. Didn't shut down any files. Didn't close down. My emails didn't turn off my computer. What's that shut my laptop leave? Because I was just cross and annoyed. This makes it sound like I hated my academic career. I had a lovely time, but that Friday afternoon feeling of, ah, I've done it again. I've still not done all these things, was just, it was a thing. Okay. And I also have to emphasize, and I've told those of you who listened before, I've heard this before and stuff I have to emphasize, I was doing well through all of this.

I finished my PhD really quickly. I got an academic job quickly. I was succeeding in all possible metrics. I was succeeding, yet I still finished weeks like that. And people used to say to me, you know, oh, you just need to plan what you're gonna do, tick off what you've done, and then review your week on a Friday.

And I'd be like, oh, shut up. Leave me alone. That sounds terrible or completely unfeasible, if not terrible. And now I find myself in this place where I'm telling you all that we need to make realistic plans, follow through on them, and then review our weeks. Except I am gonna do it from a perspective of someone who knows that it's not that simple. From the perspective of someone who gets it.

So what we're gonna talk about today is a way of thinking about this that I have touched on in the podcast before, but we're gonna go into it at a level of detail that we haven't done before. And in fact, I'm giving you a sneaky preview into some of the materials that are in my Be Your Own Best Boss program, which as you might remember, is free to all of my members.

So the two things I want to introduce you to or remind you of are these notions of boss you and implementer you. Boss you is the version of you who makes decisions, who plans, who prioritizes, who makes sure you've got the resources and the support that you need. And then implementer you is the version of you that actually does what they're told. Which has never been my strong point in life, people will agree. They're the version of you that has to actually do the work. And most people don't divide it out like that. So most people kind of try and plan a bit and then they do some stuff and then they decide they don't like it doing it like that. So they decide to do it a different way. And it kind of switch backwards and forwards between, am I doing it, am I deciding? I don't know. Am I changing my mind? Should I do that? Maybe I won't. And flick backwards and forwards between Boss You and Implementer You. And that's how you end up having weeks where you kind of decide sort of at the beginning of the week what you think you wanna get done, and then some stuff happens during the week where you change plans and do something different and decide you don't feel like it, decide that was a terrible idea, and then you end up somewhere completely different.

What also happens when we don't understand these two distinct roles is it makes it really hard to figure out what's going wrong. So when students come into my membership and I'm talking with them about what they're finding challenging at the moment, often they don't know why they're not achieving their goals or why they're achieving their goals, but they still feel rubbish and behind and overwhelmed. They don't know how to figure out even what the problem is, and that makes getting support really hard. Right? Do you need to go to a time management course or do you need to go to an imposter syndrome course, or do you need to go to counseling, right?

You don't know. All you know is this isn't working for you right now. And so one of the things we do in the membership is try to really pin down exactly what's going on. And the first step is understanding these two different roles.

Now, when I first started figuring this out for myself, I suddenly realized that my follow through, my implementer, she wasn't brilliant. She definitely procrastinated, but when she got going on something, she was pretty good and she got it done and she mostly hit deadlines, certainly for important things, not for administration quite so much, but for proper things.

Absolutely hit deadlines and. I realized that I was actually being quite unfair to implementer me, ending my weeks, telling myself I was useless, telling myself I hadn't done enough, when actually I've been working damn hard all week and I was being quite unfair to implementer. Now I ain't saying that was perfect and we'll talk about the ways the implementer can go wrong in a minute, but what I wasn't doing was really scrutinizing boss me.

Because my problem was that boss me was so enthusiastic and so ambitious and so over committed. And so determined she absolutely could do everything. Not because people told her she should, because most people told her she was trying to do too much. Not because of people pleasing or anything like that, but just because I find the world a very interesting and exciting place and I want to do all of it.

And for many years I was fully convinced that I could, and that the main way to make that work was just to commit to it and figure it out. And then I was wondering why my weeks were finishing in chaos and not having achieved everything. I used to start planning, like I used to try and do time blocking and stuff, and I'd start planning when I was gonna do things, and then I'd realized some things didn't seem to fit and at that point I did not question, how many things I was trying to fit in.

I instead decided time blocking, was stupid, stopped doing it, dove in, got some stuff done, and ended the week disappointed. You might not be quite as extreme as that. Others of you will be nodding along and going, oh my God, she's inside my head. Okay, whichever. When we can see the difference between boss who chooses what's the biggest priority at the moment, who chooses and identifies what phase of your PhD or your research career you are in at the moment and and makes decisions accordingly. And then the implementer, you who actually does the tasks. When we understand that, then we can better understand ourselves.

I want you to imagine. It's the end of the week and you are doing your Friday review. Now, if you don't do a Friday review, don't worry. I'm still getting in the habit. I'm still making it work, but if you're listening to this live, so if you are listening to this on either the 21st or the 22nd of April, 2025, you can come to my free webinar where we are gonna be designing personalized weekly review sessions exactly for you. Not complicated stupid ones that productivity gurus tell you you have to do that take you longer than the rest of your work. Quick, straightforward ones that actually help. So if that's you, make sure that you check out my website and sign up for that. You'll be able to find the links in the transcript here if you can't find 'em anywhere else. 

But imagine you are in a weekly review, even if you don't do one. Let's imagine you do and you ask yourself. How has boss you got on this week? Not just how have you gone, how has boss you got on? How has the prioritization gone? How has the planning gone? Did you design a week that actually ended up feeling good? If you did time blocking or any sort of organizational structures, did you plan something that either did or should have felt good. Did you plan about the right amount of work? Did you plan way too much? Did you scatter yourself around? Did you forget key commitments? Did you not allow for things going a bit wrong as they inevitably will in a week? Have a think about how you would review past you. Think about last week. How would you review the boss you last week? 

Now I want you to spend some time reviewing implementer you. This was the version of you that was meant to follow the plan and do the work. Did you do the things you said you were gonna do at the specific times? Did you follow through on tasks even if you didn't particularly feel like them? How would you review that side of you? And remember, as with any sort of performance review with a boss or something like that, we wanna remember to compliment ourselves too. So I want you to remember to think what did boss you do well? What did implementer you do well? As well as what they could have done better?

Now these two things obviously interact with each other, okay? These are not two separate things. Just as you and your supervisor interact and make each other's lives harder or easier, boss you and implementer you interact as well. So I want you now to imagine you put boss you and implementer you in a room.

 And I want you to make sure they have a loving, compassionate, and supportive sort of a relationship. They're gonna be good to each other, but they are gonna be honest and pragmatic. What would boss you say to implement to, you would boss, you say, you know what, dude, I'm so sorry I set you up for a fail there 'cause that was, that was just a shit show of a to-do list. Or would they say, mate. I planned a pretty good week for you. Manageable amount of stuff and you didn't do it and that's kind of frustrating. And vice versa, what would implement to you say to boss you would, they say, what are you doing? You, you gave me some instructions, like write something and I don't even know where to start. I dunno what I'm meant to be writing. I dunno what stage it's meant to be at, what quality it's meant to be. Or are they gonna say, you know what, thank you. Because when I sat down to do my analysis on Friday, I knew exactly what I needed to do. 'cause you gave me all the right stuff and that made everything way easier.

What are they gonna say to each other?

Now. Because implementer us and boss us interact so much, you are almost certainly gonna have room for improvement on both sides. And that's the joy of a longer term membership, right? Is that we have time to work on all this stuff. Minimum membership is three months. People join for at least a quarter, and they love to say in longer than that if they can and that enables us to look at both. But as a podcast listener, as somebody who wants a quick win right now, what one of the best things you can do is decide, which is a bigger issue for you. And you need to be really honest here, because I was absolutely convinced it was my implementation that was the problem when it really wasn't.

It was boss me. So if you are bit of a perfectionist, uh, bit of a people pleaser, bit of a high achiever, all those things that many PhD students are. I want you to seriously consider the possibility that it's boss you that needs a little bit more support. If it is what I do in the Be Your Own Best Boss program, which all the members get, is I go through a whole series of different sort of lessons that Boss you can learn that will help them to be a more effective boss to you. I'm just gonna share one or two with you guys today. I.

One is a notion of targets or averages and understanding the difference between targets and averages. I want you to imagine that you are intending to work for day, I'm gonna say of proper actual work, okay, insert whatever number works for you, but let's say six of actual focused work, and that's your target and you want to average six hours a day.

I want you to notice that if that is both your daily target and your desired average, then you only need a little bit to go wrong and you're not gonna meet your weekly goal.

So if you aim to do six hours work a day, and your goal is at the end of the week that you will have done five days of six hours work, then as soon as you have a day that stuff happens, your computer crashes and you have to get it sorted out, or you're not feeling great or whatever it is, then you're not meeting your weekly goal.

We have to have a difference between our daily target and the average* we're aiming for the week so that it allows for those sorts of things to happen. So if you wanna average six hours a day, you need to be aiming to work seven. Let's say you can insert your own numbers. Again, I'm not here to dictate hours for you, but let's say you aim to have seven per day on the understanding that probably at some point this week that's gonna go a bit wrong and you can still hit your target of 30 hours accrued this week.

Now the joy of course, is if you do seven on Monday and you do seven on Tuesday and things are looking good, you might be able to end up giving yourself Friday off 'cause you've already hit your 30 hours. Who knows? But if you keep that as the same thing that your daily target and your desired average, or exactly the same number, you'll never, very rarely at least hit your goals.

Or I mean, you'll end up in the worst situation, which is where you only did four on one day 'cause something happened on five another day because you didn't feel that great and dah, dah, dah, and suddenly it's Friday and you need to do 16 hours in order to be on target. And that's just no fun and not a great idea for anybody.

So. If you are a good boss, separate out what are daily targets, what are averages you're aiming for to give yourself a good chance of being able to hit your goals. If your goals require 100% compliance, they're stupid goals. And I say that with so much love and respect because I still have to fight myself back from making these goals for myself.

 I'm right here in the trenches with you. You have to allow space for things not to be perfect for you, not to be perfect, and still to hit your overarching goals for the week.

That leads to my second tip for bosses, which is we also need to decide how we manage slippages. What I mean by a slippage is where a task's taking longer than you anticipated or you're not kind of up to the number of hours you said you'd work or the work count you said you'd do, or however you are operationalizing it.

We have to decide what do we do? Does that mean we work harder tomorrow? Does that mean we change the plan? Does that mean we add more hours? We need strategies and we need to pre decide them so that when we're in that moment, we don't act like really indulgent to ourselves or super critical either. Now, in the be your own best boss course. I have like eight tips for this, right? But one that I think is really useful is instead of asking yourself, do I have time to get x done now that my schedule slipped is to ask yourself how well can I get X done in the time I have available? And I think I've used this analogy before, but I want you to imagine that like someone whose opinion you care about is coming to your house and you've got 10 minutes to clear it up.

You are gonna get it clear enough, right? You're gonna get the junk out the way. You're gonna wipe down the side. You're gonna just make it look vaguely habitable rather than like delaying them coming for hours so you can do a proper spring clean or just deciding that. You can't be bothered and it's fine. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big believer in just letting people in your house wherever stay is in, but you get my analogy right? And the same is true with work.

If you realize that things on Monday and Tuesday have taken longer than you anticipated they would, you get to decide that for the rest of the week, you are gonna see how far you can get the piece of work. In the time you have available, rather than saying, I'm gonna give it loads more time, or I'm gonna sack it off 'cause I can't reach it this week.

The other thing boss can do to really help with that is give implementers some guidance about what that looks like. So if you are making a presentation, what that means is I want you to get the titles and the text on the slides. I do not want you to put any pictures in. I do not want you to change the color scheme.

 This can be black and white if it has to be, but we are getting the content in there, for example. Okay, so boss, you can manage slippages by not only giving some kind of constrained instructions, but also giving some indication about how to go about doing that. So that's a couple of tips. If you think it's boss, you, that's the problem.

Now, some of the things we are gonna work on in the membership are really delving into that in more detail because. None of you are stupid. If you are planning too much into your weeks, you are trying to do too much. There's a reason for that, right? And some of that reason might be in your personal beliefs, in your backgrounds.

It might be in the environment that you are in. It might be the way you are thinking about stuff. And if we can better understand it. Like for me, it really was this kind of ridiculous sense of enthusiasm and, uh, that I should be able to do all this stuff 'cause I work fast. I should be able to do everything.

That really helped me because it made me realize that, you know what, I'm doing all this because I think I want to, but I don't want this life. I don't want it to feel like this. So I then had to decide what I wanted more. Did I want to try to do everything? Or did I want a life that felt a bit better than that and that was what I chose in the end.

For others of you, the reason you're saying yes to everything, the reason you're taking on too much is because you're worried about what your supervisor's gonna say or whatever. If we can get to the depths of why you are doing this, as we do with my clients, then you are much better placed to pick strategies that will work for you.

Now, you might be going, Boss Me makes great plans. Boss, me, specific, realistic. I just don't then do it when I want to. The first thing I'd say, in keeping with my general beliefs about the workplace too, is are you sure? Are you sure it's not Boss You's fault? Because sometimes implementer you is rebelling against a plan. Implementer you is saying, I'm not even sure I want to do this. This is only on my list. 'cause someone said I had to, or they're saying, I don't think I know how to do this and you haven't told me that bit.

Or they're saying. I am tired and you haven't left me any breaks, so if you think it's implementer you go back to the beginning and double check it's not boss you, but if it really, really, really is implementer you, I have a tip for that too. 

Now this is gonna be the entire huge focus of quarter two of the PhD Life Coach membership, which runs from May. So people can join at the end of April. It runs May, June, and July. We are gonna be focusing on procrastination and focus and distractions and how we can actually do the things we intend to do. So if you struggle with implementer you, then the membership is exactly where you need to be. I'm gonna give you one that you can start using now though. This is the notion of intrinsic proximal rewards. I can't remember if I've spoken about this on the podcast again, lemme know if I have, but it doesn't hurt to hear it again.

What this means is thinking very carefully about how you motivate yourself to do a particular task. Often what we do is we motivate ourselves either by thinking about getting it over with, and so we are really framing it as an in inherently negative task that we're doing, or we motivate ourselves by what we're gonna get once we've got it done, how proud we'll be when it's finished, what reward we're gonna give ourselves when it's over.

And what those things do is they shift our motivation to either avoiding the task as much as possible or to sort of more extrinsic forms of reward. So stuff that's not inherent to the task itself, but that you'll give yourself when it's done. 

What I want us to do instead is think of much more intrinsic motivation. So the reasons why this task is important to us, the reasons that we could actually enjoy doing elements of this task. Now, not everything's gonna be fun and interesting, but often the things we're avoiding are literally the things we signed up to do in our PhDs, right?

The reading and the writing and the analysis. These are the things we allegedly liked, which is why we decided to do a PhD except we've turned them into these big emotional volcanoes. If we can remind ourselves that this is an opportunity to spend time doing this thing, I like, we can really try and remind ourselves and heighten that sense of intrinsic motivation associated with the task.

The proximal bit though is about making it something that happens pretty quickly. So this is not about how good it will feel when it's done. How glad you'll be to have your PhD in the future, any of that stuff, that's all far too distal to be motivating. The proximal stuff is the why it's good here and now. Why if I do this for an hour, I'm gonna feel good during that hour and at the end of the hour. Okay, so if you are struggling with implementation, focus on intrinsic proximal rewards. Why am I doing this? Why do I care about it? What do I actually enjoy about doing this task? And really focus in on experiencing those positive things.

We can generate motivation there in the moment, even if it isn't coming to us in a flood of natural motivation. 

Now if you are thinking, okay, this stuff sounds good, but I have got so much to learn, perfect. I've got you. We're gonna carry on covering this stuff in the podcast, but if you want the more in-depth personalized, actually speaking to somebody about the things that are specific to you stuff you need the membership. Jump on my website. Click on the membership. There'll be a button. If you're listening to this live ish, it starts next week. The cart opens on the 28th of April. If you get in at the beginning, you get access to some stuff that people getting in at the end don't get, so keep an eye out for that. Jump in if you are listening to this randomly in like September, 2026. There's still a wait list open for the next quarter coming up, so sign up anyway this membership isn't going anywhere. 

So separate boss you, separate implementer you, review them separately so that you can really understand what you're doing well and what you're doing, not so well in the two different roles. And that is where we plan from. That is where you have the absolute capacity to make things feel a whole lot easier than they do right now.

If you're listening live, make sure you signed up for the weekly review webinar. Even if you can't come live, you will get all the handouts and everything afterwards. It's gonna be super, super useful. We're gonna make sure that we really understand how our weeks have gone, what we have achieved, and what we wanna do differently next week. Make sure you're signed up. Thank you all for listening, and I will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the PhD Life Coach podcast. If you like 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 the PhD life coach com.

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