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The PhD Life Coach
Whether you're a PhD student or an experienced academic, life in a university can be tough. If you're feeling overwhelmed, undervalued, or out of your depth, the PhD Life Coach can help. We talk about issues that affect all academics and how we can feel better now, without having to be perfect productivity machines. We usually do this career because we love it, so let's remember what that feels like! I'm your host, Dr Vikki Wright. Join my newsletter at www.thephdlifecoach.com.
Episodes
208 episodes
4.69 GREATEST HITS - How to manage negative feedback
When did you last get some negative feedback? As PhD students and academics, we get negative feedback quite often, either comments on drafts of papers, rejections from journals, applying for jobs, all sorts of things. We get bits of negative fe...
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4.68 GREATEST HITS - Why you should notice the paradox of imposter syndrome
Imposter syndrome often affects the most high achieving people yet it can still feel so true that you’re “not good enough” and “conning” other people into believing you’re better than you are. In this episode, I discuss a paradox that I see a l...
4.67 GREATEST HITS - How to manage your energy
How many times have you seen or been on a time management course? How many books and podcasts and blogs and social media posts have you seen about time management? I want you to compare that to how many times you've seen courses and...
4.66 GREATEST HITS - Why you deserve a life outside academia
It's so easy to believe that you don't have time for a life outside of academia. The pressure and the never-ending to-do lists mean that even having fun feels like one more thing you need to fit in. In this episode I talk about the benefits of ...
4.65 GREATEST HITS - How to use a Do Know Don't Know list
One of the things I hear clients say most often is that they don't know what to do. They either don't know what decision to make in their life, they don't know how to do something, they don't know how to present their argument, how to structure...
4.64 GREATEST HITS - What to do if you already feel behind
In this episode, I talk about feeling behind! It's easy to spend a lot of time telling yourself that you're behind your own plan or you're behind other people. Neither feel good and neither help us make more progress. I'll talk thro...
4.63 GREATEST HITS - Eight ways you’re secretly procrastinating
Procrastinating is when we scroll social media instead of working, right? No! Procrastination is anything that we do to avoid the emotions associated with doing the task we intend to do. In this episode, I will share eight things that I think a...
4.62 GREATEST HITS - How to work out why you procrastinate
Pretty much every PhD student struggles with procrastination yet the advice is often very generic. In this episode, I talk about a theoretical framework that helps us better understand why each of us, as individuals, procrastinate so that we ca...
4.61 GREATEST HITS - How to Stop Wasting Time by Trying to Be Too Efficient
In this episode, I explain why chasing ‘perfect efficiency’ is actually making your PhD harder. Many students think that taking flawless notes or writing excellent first drafts will save time — but this mindset often leads to procrastination an...
4.60 GREATEST HITS - 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 fr...
4.59 GREATEST HITS - Why I’m banning highlighters
In this episode, I make a feisty case for why we should ban highlighters! I’ll give you four reasons they’re not helping you and tell you what you should be doing instead. Forward this to all your favourite stationery-obsessed friends!
4.58 GREATEST HITS - How to take better notes
Pretty much all PhD students have a vague (or very strong) sense that they’re not taking “good enough” notes. Yet for most of us, we’re not really clear what good enough notes would actually be like, and often have really unrealistic expectatio...
4.57 GREATEST HITS - Why you should never read when you're writing
Do you keep getting distracted when you’re writing? Settle down to actual draft something, then decide to just look something up, and then two hours later you’re still down the rabbit hole and nothing is written. If so, this episode is for you!...
4.56 GREATEST HITS - How to read academic papers more quickly
One of the most common comments I hear from PhD students is that reading always takes longer than they expect. In this episode, I share four elements that you need to take into account when deciding how much time you are going to give an articl...
4.55 GREATEST HITS - How to edit your work without hating yourself
One of the most frustrating moments in a PhD or academic career is reading through your first draft—only to realise it’s a mess. It doesn’t flow, the arguments feel clunky, and now you’re stuck figuring out how to fix it.In today’s episo...
4.54 GREATEST HITS - How to write when you’re confused
Writing can feel like you’re banging your head against a wall sometimes. Trying to craft sentences, when you’re not entirely sure where you’re going, and then spending hours working and ending up with nothing to show for it. In this episode I u...
4.53 GREATEST HITS - How Winnie the Pooh can help you manage your mind
In this episode we think about our own inner dialogue. How do you speak to yourself? Are you critical? Quick to judgment? Pessimisitic? Put yourself under pressure? All of these things are so common in academia yet we never really get shown how...
4.52 GREATEST HITS - How to be your own best supervisor
There is no voice you hear more often than the voice inside your head, yet we often spend very little time thinking about HOW we speak to ourselves and the effect it has. When did you last call yourself useless? Lazy? Stupid? In this episode we...
4.51 GREATEST HITS - How to prepare for a difficult meeting
If you put off having difficult conversations or get frazzled just thinking about it, then you need to bookmark this episode! I am going to give you my three step process for preparing for a difficult meeting. You’ll learn how to manage your ow...
4.50 GREATEST HITS - How to have a great relationship with your supervisor
In this episode I discuss five ways that you can improve your relationship with your PhD supervisor. This relationship is one of the most important aspects of your research experience yet we so often leave it to chance. The good news is that yo...
4.49 GREATEST HITS - What to do if you’re lonely in academia
This is the second episode this week focused on community and relationships. Loneliness in academia is so common yet so rarely talked about. In this episode I’m going to get honest about some of my experiences of loneliness, share why I think a...
4.48 GREATEST HITS - How to build your own academic community
This week we’re thinking about community and relationships! So many people feel isolated in academic and like they "should" have more of a community than they do. In this episode, I talk about the benefits of having a community inside and outsi...
4.47 GREATEST HITS - How to prepare for your academic summer - structure and freedom
This is the second of my two part series about thriving in our academic summer. This time we consider the balance between structure and freedom and how to plan a summer that meets all of our needs. I chose these episodes for my greatest hits be...
4.46 GREATEST HITS - How to prepare for your academic summer - acceptance and resistance
This is the first of my 24 favourite episodes, repeated for you this summer! The summer period can be particularly stressful for academics, whether it's because you miss the structure of "normal" term or because you don't feel like you even GET...
4.45 Some common misconceptions about self improvement - and what to do instead
We often assume that the route to achieving our goals is to “improve” ourselves in some way and so we search podcasts (like mine!), YouTube, or wherever for advice and tips. The trouble is, there’s a lot of misconceptions about what self-improv...