4.31 How to get going on work without external accountability

One of the hardest things in academia is the lack of accountability for the most “important” work. We know we must write, but there’s rarely external deadlines and so many other things feel more urgent. One of the PhD Life Coach membership students asked how to get going on a task without external accountability and this is an extended version of my answer to her. I’ll discuss why external accountability helps, how we can put these frameworks in place for ourselves, and how to overcome common pitfalls. 

If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on what to do if 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

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

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast and this week I'm gonna be answering another question submitted by one of my members. So as most of you will know, I have the PhD life coach membership, which students can join quarter by quarter. And one of the things they get access to is the option of submitting questions, that they want some advice on, they want some what new ways of thinking about they submit them. And I record a short voice note. So this is one I did a few weeks back for one of our members, but it was a topic that comes up quite a lot and it was one that I had a little more to say about, So I decided that I would do it as a more extended episode and share it with all of you guys as well.

And the question this member asked was about external accountability, but she specifically said, I'm struggling to get going without external accountability. Now, we all know that when you're doing a PhD or even in the more unstructured times of an [00:01:00] academic career, one of the things that can be really difficult is not having that kind of external structure that you often had through the earlier parts of your education.

Where there were kind of real deadlines that meant something if you miss them and people sort of chasing you up and class schedules and all these things, and even quite a long way into your academic career, you may find you have external accountability for some things, you gotta turn up and teach your classes, right? But often there won't be much external accountability for the other stuff. So submitting papers, submitting grants, all those things.

And this student particularly asked about struggling to get going on tasks when there wasn't any external accountability. And before we start getting into the what you can actually do about that stuff, and we are gonna do that, don't worry. Before we get into that , I just wanted to share why I was particularly impressed with this question.

One of the things that we try and build in the membership is the sort of self-awareness that helps us [00:02:00] to ask really precise questions. That helps us to really understand why the things that we're struggling with feel so difficult. Why are we struggling with them? And this question, even though it was quite a short question, really pinpointed a couple of pieces of self-awareness that I was really impressed with.

The first is recognizing that the problem appears, at least to be a lack of external accountability. Often when people are sort of earlier stages of their self development journeys, they're saying things like, I just can't get my work done and I dunno why, and things like that. And when we're in that stage, it can be really hard to plan any way forward at all. Because we're in this position where we are saying, you know, I wanna do the thing. I'm not doing the thing. I don't understand why I'm not doing the thing. So what do I do? And that's quite hard to answer, right? But this student had really pinned it down as being actually, when there's external accountability, I find it much easier.

And when there's not, [00:03:00] I find it more challenging and then suddenly we're starting to get a problem that is more crystallized, more specific. You guys have all done this with research questions, right? When we have a research question that's nice and precise, it is much easier to figure out how we're gonna address it than when we have these big, loose, fluffy research questions and the same's true with self-development stuff. So this student had really pinpointed the role of external accountability, and the other thing that they had really pinpointed was that the problem was often getting started.

And I thought that was really insightful because when we are unhappy with our kind of work practices, our kind of ability to be productive and things like that, again, we're often not very precise about what we mean. Often we say things like, oh, I'm just not getting enough done, or whatever, without really pinning down the problem. This student recognized that it was the getting going that was the problem. That sort of initiation energy that's needed to start a new [00:04:00] task rather than her ability to sustain focus on something once she got going.

She also went on. In the voice notes that I do for the membership. I read out the actual question, I'm not gonna do that here, but she also went on to recognize that because she has problems getting started, She often then has problems stopping because she doesn't trust that she's gonna get started again. Her sort of lack of belief that she's capable of initiating a task means that once she gets going, she almost gets to the mustn't stop, mustn't stop. Mustn't stop stage. Overshoots how long she'd planned to work for. Ends up working later than she intended, then feels tired tomorrow and finds it difficult to get going again, but it's driven by this lack of faith that she'll be able to start again. And so I thought it was just a really good example of how when we have a much more precise understanding of the problem, it becomes something that's much, much easier [00:05:00] to address.

Okay. Now those of you who get my newsletter, you will know that you get a summary of the podcast that gives you all the key take home points. If you're not on my newsletter, by the way, why not? You miss out on these summaries? You miss out on the reflective questions and you don't get to hear when they're exciting, free and paid opportunities for you to participate more.

So if you haven't joined yet, make sure you go to the PhD life coach.com website and right on the front you'll see a button for joining the newsletter. Anyway, this stuff I'm talking about here, this isn't even in the newsletter. The stuff in the newsletter focuses entirely on the external accountability stuff, but as a little extra reflective prompt for you, I want you to think about any challenge you are having at the moment and ask yourself to describe it as precisely as you possibly can. So if you often tell yourself, I procrastinate too much, I lack motivation, I get overwhelmed and then don't get anything done. If [00:06:00] those are the big generic things that you're telling yourself, I want you to practice describing them as specifically and kind of in pedantic detail as you can. Try and narrow the focus, narrow the focus, narrow the focus until it sounds like something that describes specifically you. It's really, really good practice.

I'm also gonna add, I'm gonna let you in a little secret here 'cause I don't think I've told you guys this yet. The next quarter of the membership, which starts at the beginning of May, it opens to new members at the end of April. Our focus is gonna be procrastination, motivation and overwhelm. So if you are resonating with this, if you are thinking, yep, those are exactly my problems, you really need to check out the membership. If you're an academic, if you are in the very early stages, you're not supervising other students, then you're still eligible. So if you're a postdoc, then you can still come on in. If you're a PhD student, you can absolutely come on in. If you are more senior than that, then [00:07:00] please do at least let your students know about the opportunity. You'll hear more about it over the next few weeks, and in fact, the podcast is going to focus over the next few weeks on sharing some coaching sessions with the actual members that we have at the moment, so keep an ear out for that.

Anyway, have a practice. See if you can define your question as precisely as this member was able to. So what are we gonna do about it? Without external accountability, they are struggling to get going. The first thing we're gonna investigate even more deeply, what is it about external accountability for you that makes it easier to do these things?

Because that differs, right? It's not inevitable that external accountability will make you do something. In fact, I'm the sort of person, and possibly it's something to do with my undiagnosed ADHD. Who knows. My mother would call it bloody mindedness. That external accountability can sometimes push me away from getting something done. If somebody's chasing me [00:08:00] up about something, I may be less likely to do it unless there's a badge or some sort of sticker, in which case I'm definitely doing it. But generally that might push me away. So what is it? Is it that you like pleasing other people? Is it that having external accountability put some time urgency on something and you need that time urgency to get started?

Is it that when there's external accountability, it's usually much more clearly defined, more obvious exactly what it is you need to do by when, so it's simplifies some of that executive functioning. What is it about external accountability that makes it easier for you to get going on something than when you don't have that accountability? Sometimes it's simply about that sense that we allow ourselves to get away, quote unquote, with saying, oh, I'll do it later, I'll do it later, Whereas we wouldn't want to say those things to somebody else. So sometimes it's not so much about wanting praise, but about that kind [00:09:00] of self presentation to somebody else. We don't want somebody else to think that we're someone that makes excuses that we're someone that doesn't do the things we say we do, where we'll still do that to ourselves potentially. So have a think what it is for you.

The reason that's so important is that if we can get clearer, there's a lot of story about clarity here today, isn't there? If we can get clearer about what it is that's helpful about external accountability, we can think more about how we can replicate that when there isn't that formal external accountability there.

Now that doesn't mean putting in external accountability. I often get approached by people for coaching and when I ask them, what is it that you're looking for from coaching, they say, I want some external accountability. You know, my supervisor's not that present. I want somebody that I'm accountable to. And I almost always say no to those people. Or at least I certainly don't say yes. Without a [00:10:00] conversation about why I don't think me providing external accountability is the solution here, because if we just transfer external accountability to somewhere else, we still don't learn to be accountable to ourselves in any way. And when the external accountability is somewhat fake, ie I haven't got any control over the, you know, if, if you tell me you're gonna do something and then you don't do it, sure you've gotta rock up and tell me that, but you could just not come. Right? And so there's very little actual accountability there. So when we try and put fake accountability in place, it usually doesn't work.

But what we get to do instead is what are we getting outta that external accountability and how could we create that for ourselves? So if it's about a sense of structure, how can we create our own sense of structure? A lot of my members, for example, use the member led coworking sessions where they can just log in. Do a zoom call. Tell somebody what they're working on and get [00:11:00] on with it. And that just provides enough structure, enough sense that they're in it with other people for them to get on.

If it's about task clarity that when somebody else has asked you to do it, it's usually much more obvious, what you need to be doing. Then we get to ask ourselves, okay, how can I make this task that I'm not accountable to other people for? How can I make it feel much clearer, much better defined so that the route to getting it done feels much more obvious to me?

Sometimes it's more about the way that the external accountability person supports you. So with nice external accountability, maybe they help you feel calm, they help you feel reassured, they remind you what you have achieved, and then we get to think, how can we do those things for ourselves. If reassurance is something that's really important from an external accountability partner, how could we give ourselves reassurance?

And I have a whole episode on that, by the way. I'll link to it in the [00:12:00] newsletter. We get again, to think how can we represent these things for ourselves? So rather than wishing we have external accountability, we instead get to think, how can we create those qualities ourselves.

Now the next thing we are gonna do is really think about the fact that it was the getting going that was the problem, and we can ask ourselves again what would help us to get going, specifically if we had external accountability. Maybe it's clear instructions, maybe it's achievable goals, maybe it's a sort of positive compass telling us what direction to move in and we again get to replicate those things. What we wanna be careful of though, is that the things we put in place to help us get going aren't the things that undermine us later.

Now, one of the techniques that I've seen a lot of people use is this notion of, let's just do 15 minutes. We can [00:13:00] do 15 minutes. Let's just do 15 minutes. Right? And that can feel like a really good strategy because you're not having to think about, okay, I'm gonna sit down for four hours and do amazing work, or whatever. We're breaking it down gently, but when we promise ourselves that we'll do. Just 15 minutes and then after 15 minutes we tell ourselves to keep going, and then we somehow end up going on for ages, partly because we don't trust that we'll start again next time then that is actually often a big betrayal of your own trust, that you've sort of got yourself going on the promise that it'll only be a short work block and then you've kept going 'cause you've sort of got that momentum going and you feel like, you know, oh, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Well, I've got it might not start again, but the problem is that reinforces that it's hard to start next time because you start not believing yourself. It's like, okay, random analogy, alert. I once did a adventure race in Borneo, 'cause obviously who doesn't [00:14:00] randomly do a adventure race in Borneo anyway.

And one of the gorgeous local helpers who was running the race forest, it was like a multi-day event thing. Um, whenever you went round a corner. He would say just a hundred meters. No matter where we were on the course. Right. It's just a hundred meters. It's just a hundred meters. And it gotta a stage where he just didn't believe a word he said because it was never just a hundred meters. It was usually a really long way. And it, it became a running joke, right? And I think he did it just to entertain us, but it meant we didn't believe him. We didn't trust the word he said. And this happens to ourselves when we say, oh, we'll just do a short work block, and then we end up working for way longer than we intended.

And it's something that weirdly, we praise ourselves for, oh, I only intended to work for half an hour, but I ended up working four hours. Aren't I clever? Aren't I dedicated? I say, no, no, not really. You are making it so that you are somebody who you can't trust. You [00:15:00] are making it so that next time you start, you don't believe yourself when you say it's only gonna be half an hour, and so whilst you're saying it'll only be half an hour, you are knowing that really you're intending to do more, and that makes it even harder to start next time.

So what I would really encourage you to do is to try and set in place tactics that help you to start that don't undermine that faith in yourself that you can develop. So things like reminding yourself why you want to do it, reminding yourself that you are capable of doing the next step, reminding yourself we are starting with 30 minutes and then we are gonna reassess. 'cause that's very different than saying I'm only gonna do 30 minutes. What it means though, is after 30 minutes, you need to genuinely reassess and genuinely decide whether you're gonna carry on at that stage or not. And you have to genuinely agree with yourself that if you choose not to carry on, that's still a [00:16:00] win. That's still 30 minutes done. Okay.

We are trying to set in place motivations for all of this that are rooted in us having a choice about this, that are rooted in us feeling competent, feeling like we're capable of doing things, and feeling like this is something that's important and meaningful to us.

The other practice that I want you to build alongside this, if you are practicing making it easier to get going, I want you to also practice stopping when you said you would as well. Okay. I don't want you to practice one without the other because if you could get better at getting yourself going, but you're still not good at getting yourself to stop and believing that you'll get going next time, that's when we build this culture of overwork that just doesn't really serve us, and that doesn't build this sense of faith in ourselves.

So if you are trying to get better at getting yourself to start when you intended to start, I want you to also practice stopping when you intended to stop.

Now the big tips for doing that are reminding yourself that you're practicing both things at [00:17:00] once. Reminding yourself that learning to stop is part of learning to start again, and then thinking to yourself, right, if I'm stopping now, how can I make it really easy for myself to start again tomorrow or just start again later on. Because often we think I won't have the motivation.

I am on a roll. I know what I'm doing and I'll forget what I was gonna say. All these sorts of things, right? So those are the questions I need to answer for yourself. If you get to the end of a work block session and you are feeling like actually, You know, or I, I probably should just keep going. I want a bit of a role, I mean, to ask yourself, what would enable me to pick up this role tomorrow?

What would remind me why it's interesting? What would make it easy for me to remember what the next step is? What would make it easy for me to remember exactly where I'm up to? One way to think about it is to think about it in terms of handover notes.

So, any of you who have worked in a clinical [00:18:00] environment will know that when one shift of doctors or nurses or whoever come on, there is usually a period of time where they kind of go round together and hand over one shift to the next. So they update them on each of the cases. They let them know what's been done, they make sure their records are sorted so that the incoming shift know exactly where they're at. I want you to think about preparing for the next shift in the same way, even though you are the next shift, so that as you come towards the end of a block that you've been intending to work, you are thinking about how can I set this up so that it's easy for me to pick up next time I pick it up?

Okay, so we're working on getting, going and finishing on time, at the same time, because one will feed the other.

That sort of record keeping, that sort of handover documents can also help with this sense of accountability because if we haven't got accountability to others, if we're not [00:19:00] reporting to others. One thing that can be really useful is to keep a way of kind of reporting to ourselves so that we are much clearer whether we've done what we intended, where we're up to, what going our way, what we're gonna do about it, and all of the things that an external accountability person might help you navigate. If we've got our own records, if we can see what we've been doing, then again, it becomes much easier to provide that sort of accountability and support to ourselves.

The final thing I'm gonna recommend today, and this is gonna sound a little strange, but it is massively helped me. Now I say it's helped me. You guys all know I'm a work in progress, right? I'm not perfect on the self-accountability things, by any extent, but I'm a lot better than I was as with a lot of things and the thing that has helped me more than any other is deciding that being accountable to myself is the point. And let me explain what I mean by that. I used to argue with [00:20:00] myself all the time, so I would make a plan. I would decide that I should do A and then B. And then when it was time to do A, I would convince myself as to why it's exactly not the time to do A, yeah, I should probably do B because that would be better and that makes more sense and it would better to do B than A.

And I would have these arguments with myself and often in these arguments, I'd end up doing neither of them because I plan to do A, but I probably should do B and I can't really decide which. So I do neither. Genius. Love it. I'm sure some of you will empathize with that. And the thing I realized that snipped off the argument more than anything else was saying, I will do a, because it's what I said I would do. Not because it's the best answer, not because it's the most logical, not because it's the most efficient, no other reason other than it's what I said I'd do. And I kind of want to be somebody who does what they said they'd do. And now does that mean I never changed my mind and I never [00:21:00] don't, do what I said I'd do?

No, obviously, but I stick to what I said I'd do inordinately more than I ever used to because I've made the accountability., The point. I'm going because I said I would. I'm doing that thing now because I said I would. I'm starting at this time because I said I would.

And then what we get to do is we get to reinforce what a gorgeous thing it is when we do what we said we'd do. And for lots of you, the other thing they say, oh, but what happens? You end up like, you know, you don't start exactly when you said you would, and so then you're behind on your schedule and dah, dah, dah. I just go back into my schedule. Okay, what did I say I'd be doing at 11 o'clock? Okay, we're doing that then whether I did what I said I was gonna do between nine and 11. Who knows, but I said I was gonna be doing this at 11, so that's what I'm gonna crack on with right now. When we make being accountable to ourselves, the specific thing we're trying to [00:22:00] do over and above any of our actual individual goals, then suddenly we can kind of take away a lot of the self negotiation, take away a lot of that discussion, and do the thing we intended to do.

Now where that all comes back to, and this is something we've been working on in the membership this quarter that's happening at the moment, is we then have to really be careful when we're making our plans that their plans we actually want to stick to. Because if you are somebody who struggles without external accountability, a big chunk of that is probably you make ludicrous plans at the moment because you don't hold yourself accountable to them anyway.

So you just plan some stuff without really thinking about whether it's everything you need to do, without really thinking about whether it's achievable or not. And then because you're not being held accountable to it, you just don't do it and then we wonder why we are not doing the things we said we [00:23:00] would.

When we are working on building the sense of accountability to ourselves in the absence of external accountability by replicating what we want from external accountability for ourselves, then part of that is making realistic plans that take into account the real human you, the real different responsibilities that you have, so that the initial plan is as close as possible to something you want to stick to. So that you can then use the, I'm doing this because it's what I said I'd do, and it was a reasonable plan, As your logic throughout, if you believe it's an unreasonable plan before you start, that's very hard to stick to.

Just as if you are external accountability person, the person who's holding you to this, if you thought they were unreasonable, you thought they were unfair in what they were asked. You would probably be much less inclined to kind of scurry to meet what they're asking of you. But if that's [00:24:00] somebody who has set you realistic, understandable, fair goals and targets, we're much more likely to try and achieve it.

We want to be replicating that for ourselves. So that was a sort of extended answer of the short voice note that I gave my member when she asked this. I hope that you found it useful. I know working without external accountability is one of the hardest things. It's one of the things that we need to develop all the way through our PhDs and our academic careers.

I hope it's given you some food for thought. If you are on my newsletter, do reply to the emails. Let me know what you think and how this is applying in your life. Now, keep an eye on the podcast because over the next few weeks we are gonna have some coaching episodes. So I have asked my members for volunteers who would be willing to get coached for the podcast on a variety of different topics so it will give you a real insight into common issues that PhD students experience that you can learn from, apply for yourself, but it'll also give you some insight what it's [00:25:00] like to be in the membership and being able to hear other people getting coached on topics that are relevant to you. So make sure you tune in for those. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.