4.14 What to do when the **** hits the fan

Short one this week - I am using a current example from my own life to talk you through how to look after yourself when it all goes wrong. I talk through how I decided what work I am and am not going to do, and how I am looking after myself in the process. It’s short and the audio will be less crisp as I’m recording on my phone but I think it will be useful for many of you. 

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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. Um, I'm not gonna lie, I nearly didn't record this podcast. Um, a lot is happening over here and I am not gonna go into the details on the podcast. But suffice to say that life is complicated right now, if you're concerned. I am fine. I don't want you to be worried about me, but there is a lot of stuff going on that means that things are more difficult than I would like them to be.

Um, and I need a podcast for this week, and so when, when I found out all the things that I've recently found out, I had to stop and think, right? What am I actually doing? What do I need to do? What can I do? Defer. What can I decide not to do? Essentially, how can I look after myself while I navigate all this other stuff?

And for a moment I thought, right. I have a podcast episode that I've already recorded, intending to cover off the one of the Christmas period podcasts. And I thought, you know what? I can just move that forward and share that with them. Um, and so I was like, okay, we'll do that. That's fine. But then I thought actually for two reasons, I didn't wanna do that.

Firstly, from my perspective, I don't want to disadvantage future me. Okay? I am super proud of the fact that I have already recorded one of the podcasts for the Christmas period, and I didn't want to then put myself back behind that if I. Used that one. Now. I was proud that I had the option, right? I was proud that I had something in the bank that I could use, but I didn't want to mess up my carefully lay plans to be ready for Christmas.

I also thought that actually it might be useful for you guys. To hear a little bit about how I am navigating managing my workload while things are challenging. And actually that decision was reinforced when I sent a message to my membership, explaining to them how I was gonna handle it and what implications it might have for them.

And I got a lovely email back from one of my members saying how much she values that I not only coach them, but I model. Like in my own life, how I navigate things. So I thought it was a really good opportunity. So this episode is about what to do when the bad stuff hits the metaphorical fan. Um, it's gonna be short.

Um, you can already probably hear I'm recording on my phone because I'm away from my usual setup. There's not going to be a YouTube version of it. So this, and I'll explain in the podcast why all that is so. The first thing is pause and breathe. Okay. I am a few days into the situation unfolding, and I haven't made all these decisions immediately.

Sometimes we think we have to like just. Immediately cancel everything or immediately decide that we're doing everything or whatever. I gave myself a little bit of time to pause and breathe. I decided that there definitely would need to be some adjustments, but that I could take a little bit of time to figure that out, and I would always want you guys to do that too.

Just take a second to have a deep breath, a few deep breaths, and give yourself some time to think about it. Um, the second step always is to gather a small network of support. And I'm saying small because sometimes when difficult things are happening, some of you will want to retreat into your shell and not tell anybody at all.

Others of you will feel a kind of urge to tell lots of people. Um. I was probably in the latter half where it was like, I kind of wanna talk about this stuff. Um, but actually sometimes having a large network of people just adds, you know, trying to help you can add to your cognitive load. So I basically told a few people what was happening, people that were able to help me either pragmatically or emotionally.

And I haven't talked, I've got lots of very close friends that have no idea of anything happening. Um. But having a small network of support is easier to navigate and it means that the sort of, you get the things that you need. Um, one tip for when you're asking for support, partly, you know, we have to balance our own feelings of guilt and whatever that they're doing.

This, I try to. Acknowledge that that's okay to feel like that, but it's also okay to ask them. Um, but one practical tip is, um, ask people to take the cognitive load, not just give them tasks. So as a really small example, I'm away from home at the moment, so, um, my dog is with my mom and my sister will be taking the dog to the field.

Now I could be messaging her with details about what time 'cause he gets a secure field 'cause he's a naughty barky boy. Um. I could be messaging her with details about what time the field is and how to get in and what the code for the padlock is and when to pick him up and blah, blah, blah. I'm not, I've just told my sister to talk to my mom.

They can sort it out between them. So do your best to ha wherever you can to hand over cognitive load as well as needing to sort of navigate the, like, give out the tasks yourself. Next step is cancel anything unnecessary. Now, thankfully this week I actually had a relatively light week. I do do workshops for other universities as one-offs.

Um, and I didn't have any this week. I have a small number. I have my usual member member sessions, and I have a small number of one-to-one sessions, but I didn't have any other workshops. I don't know, I don't think I would've canceled them, but have a look through. I did have a few other bits and pieces that I was intending to do that I have let people know.

That. Um, so to go immediately canceling anything that you can truly go, yeah, that's just not necessary this week. When you are considering the rest, when you're considering what you do wanna do and what you don't wanna do, really avoid all or nothing thinking. There can be a real tendency to either tell yourself, I've just got to keep going.

There's too much to do. I can't, you know, I can't cancel anything or to tell yourself I absolutely can't do anything I need to just. Cancel everything now. Sometimes nothing might be the right answer. For some of you, depending on what's happening and everything, doing absolutely nothing might be the right answer for me this time.

I don't think it is the right answer. I think I, I am perfectly capable of doing some things and in some ways it's quite nice to return into a little bit of normality for a period and do the things that I do normally and that I get, like I get nice feelings from doing and whatnot. Um, so for me, nothing was not the right answer.

And remembering that it's not an all or nothing thing is super important because then you can kind of pick and choose in a intentional way what things you want to do. And for me that means balancing up two things. It means balancing up what is kind of most important, what will cause the most disruption if I don't do it, for example.

Um, but it's also thinking then about what things do I have cognitive space for and what things do I. Get some benefit from doing. Okay. So at the moment I'm actually recording this, sat in a coworking session with my members. Um, and I, I love seeing my members. My members are great people. They always make me feel better.

I love being with them. And so it's actually really nice to be, to be doing this. So thinking about what things actually give you those little bits of joy and what things you don't need to do. The other thing I would really encourage you is to think about your future self as well as your current self.

So I gave you an example of that at the beginning of the podcast. Okay. So I, um, I could have just used a, um. A prerecorded podcast for today, but that would have penalized future me. 'cause I would've then need to think of something different to talk about for the Christmas podcast, for example, that I've had planned for a while.

Um, and I decided not to, I decided to be kind to future me and do this now. Now, does that mean that I'm doing a slightly half-assed version of a podcast? Yeah, absolutely. There's no YouTube. The sound's not gonna be great. It's gonna be shorter than usual. Is it gonna be super useful for you? Yeah, I think it probably is to be fair.

Um, and. So it, it, it does the job. And I think, to be honest, I think it does the job in a good way. And I'm really pleased that I'm not adding to my list of now having to think of more things for the holiday, for example. The other thing is once you've decided what things you are doing or what things you aren't doing, think about whether there's anything you can either reduce or preempt.

So for me, I've sent a message to my members saying, look, at the moment I'm intending to go ahead with all of our sessions. I enjoy talking to them. It's about, it's a load I can manage. Um. But I have also given them a heads up that it's possible I may change my mind about that. It's possible I may need to cancel some sessions and I've given them some, um, practical information about what that will look like, that I'll essentially delete it from the calendar or I'll send them a message in Slack that I might not be able to access the membership site to send a, um, send a specific message.

So by doing that, I sort of. Preempt the fact that something unexpected might happen, if you see what I mean. And it just means that I know that they're kind of aware and it means that, um, I will have less logistics to sort out if I do decide that something needs to change. And you can think about how that applies to you.

For example, you know, maybe there are deadlines you still want to try and hit or something, but you can then, um. Make sure that you, you know, if you've told people that there might be a problem, then it's much easier to quickly send your supervisor a message saying, yeah, it turns out that was optimistic, not gonna hit it, or whatever, than it is to have to explain it all in that moment.

Um. Final thing is just be really kind to yourself. Even this sort of planning, even trying to think through what you do and don't want to do can take a lot of cognitive load at a time when you don't have much to go around. So keep it really simple. And my final message is don't forget that you are a body.

You are a human body, a human being body, as well as just a brain. Um. I just took a break in the, um, body double session to have a big stretch on the hotel room floor and I feel a lot better for it. We've been really mindful to make sure we are drinking water and trying to eat some food and all those sorts of things, so when it is all going down for you, don't forget those basics.

Looking after your body, I am keeping it really simple this week. So that is your podcast. I suspect it will be something that is useful for some of you when, when these things happen. Um, thank you all for being there as usual, and I will see you next week.