4.26 What to do when you don’t have enough time

Lots of PhD students and academics feel unable to make decisions about their time management because of a series of beliefs that feel very true. They simultaneously tell themselves “I can’t fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments” AND “I can’t write more in the evenings and weekends because I’m tired” AND “I can’t reduce my commitments during the day because they’re fixed” AND “I have to (and should be able to) find more time for my writing”. In today’s episode, I discuss how believing those four statements trap you in a box, and what you can do to find a way out.  

If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on what to do when you have too much to do.

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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. Now, this episode came about because some members were very honest with me and actually pushed back on something I was suggesting. We were running a workshop about the shape of your week. So thinking about roughly a template for what you want your week to look like week to week. Now, for some people it was kind of revolutionary that you could even pick that, but the idea behind that workshop is that essentially if we know or decide that we try to do these sorts of things on those sorts of days or these sorts of times of days, then when we start a week, we are not just starting from a kind of haphazard blank slate. We're kind of starting from a notional how we'd like it all to shape out.

And I know it doesn't always work out like that, right? I'm assuming as everybody else, it doesn't always work out the way you intend. But if we can start with that sort of approximate aim, then when we [00:01:00] can fit to that, that we are much more likely to end up with a week that feels intentional and feels like it's playing to our strengths and giving us what we need.

Anyway, so that was the workshop, right? And I have my gorgeous members there, and so many people are coming to the workshops. It's very exciting. My membership is bigger than it's ever been at the moment, and getting really, really good turnout. People are really enjoying the process that we are going through, loving it, and we use the chat, right? Any of you have been to my free sessions, and if you haven't, I've got one on Wednesday. By the way, if you're listening to this live, it is Monday, the 23rd of February. There is a free workshop for all of you on Wednesday the 25th of February. Check on my website for how to sign up. Or if you're on my newsletter, you'll have been sent it anyway.

Anyway, so in my workshops I'm like sharing how to do things, what approaches you can take, and everyone's in the chat giving their suggestions, answering my questions, you know, asking their own questions, all that sort of thing. And I realized, you know, I'm pretty engaged in that chat. I'm sort of responding to what people say and things, [00:02:00] and I realized there were a lot of people that said, I can't do this. It was in the chat saying, Nope. I can't, I can't come up with a shape of my week because I've got all this stuff. This was a lot of my part-time students, not gonna lie. If you're a part-time student, this will really resonate. Also, if you are an academic who is balancing teaching and leadership and research, I think it will really resonate with you too, and anybody who's pinning down any other commitments so if you are doing a PhD or doing academia while parenting or anything like that, okay.

It might still resonate if you're a full-time student without other commitments. So do keep listening. I'll be interested to hear your perspectives on it too, but I think particularly for those people who are trying to wedge an awful lot into their weeks, it really, really resonated.

And they were saying, I can't do this, Vikki. It doesn't fit. And my response to that is [00:03:00] always, well, it's really useful to know it doesn't fit. It's really useful to have that realization. It might feel like you therefore can't do planning, but actually if the first step of your planning process is realizing that all the things that you have to do and I'm using have to do kind of carefully there, if all the things you have to do, don't fit in a way that you can plan your week, then that's a really good realization.

And as we talked... So this started out being just me responding to one person in the chat, more people came up. It doesn't fit for me either, Vikki. It doesn't work. And so I was asking tell, talk, talk me through it. Okay? Tell me what doesn't fit, why it doesn't fit. And the common pattern that came out was is what I call trapping yourself in a box.

And this is when we have a [00:04:00] series of beliefs that we absolutely think each of them is true, yet they're contradictory of each other. And often we kind of avoid thinking about the fact they're contradictory of each other.

So let me give you an example of the trapped in a box that I saw with many of these members. It was simultaneously holding the belief I can't fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments. So for some of them it was other part-time or full-time work, for some of them, their academics who are doing a PhD alongside. I can't fit in writing during the day because I have other commitments with a little by the way, side order of, and I need a big block of time in order to be able to get on with my academic tasks. So I can't fit it in because I'm too busy during the day and because I need big blocks of time in order to get on with this sort of work, and therefore I need to fit it into the [00:05:00] evenings and weekends, but I don't want to sacrifice my social life, and I'm always too tired when it comes to evenings and weekends, so it doesn't end up happening then. And I can't change the commitments I've got during the day because I have to do these things for my job. It's compulsory. They have to be done. And I definitely have to find time to write my academic work and I should be able to find that time.

And you can see how you sort of bang between these different things. These of you watching on YouTube, you'll see me sort of doing a square with my hand in the air showing you sort of banging around that box now.

That's just slight tangent. One of my one-to-one clients who I've worked with for like two years, literally. Okay. She's been here like one of the longest of any of you said. It wasn't until you talked about what I'd see on YouTube that I realized you have a YouTube channel. I [00:06:00] have a YouTube channel, people. If you are somebody who likes not only listening to me when you are driving somewhere or whatever. But would like to actually be able to take notes and things like that, everything I put on this podcast is also there on YouTube. It's not a fancy like edited Mr. Beast type joby. It's literally this, except you can see my big face while I'm talking. So there's nothing fancy about it, but it's a video version of this if you haven't found them. There are also study with me videos on there too. There's two different ones. There's one for doing a 15 minute email smash if you're feeling completely outta control. And there's one for a 45 minute, um, kind of like study with me focused session. My members use them a lot as a way to kind of kickstart themselves onto doing things. So go check out my YouTube channel, tell your friends and students and whatnot. Anyway, that's what we were saying. Trapped in this box. I'm now moving my hand again in the square on YouTube.

Um, and we sort of banging between, I [00:07:00] can't do it then. 'cause I don't have time. I can't change the things that are taking up my time. I can't do it at other times 'cause either I'm too tired or there's not sufficient time, but I must find time. And if that feels resonant with you, if that feels like I'm looking into your brain, this is what my members were like.

They're like, Vikki, can you see inside my head say, yeah, because I know you guys, I've been you guys, I know what this is like. If that feels like you, I want you just to pause and breathe with me for a second, okay? Because that is an exhausting place to keep yourself. To be telling yourself that you should be able to do it. You must do it in order to achieve your goals, and that those goals are possible, right? Because all this is predicated on the fact that you believe you have time on some level to do your PhD or do your academic writing or whatever. Yet, nothing can shift. There isn't time. And so months go by [00:08:00] and months don't go by in a kind of, oh, well, you know, didn't do it, drift through. Months go by where you're beating yourself up for the fact that you are somehow not finding a version of this that works. That's exhausting. If you are feeling exhausted, if you are listening to that, this going, oh my goodness, that's me and I am exhausted. Let's just take a second. Okay.

Let's just take a second. You are not on your own. This is not something that shows that you are broken. This is not something that shows you're doing something wrong. It's that all of these separate beliefs you have generated over time. People have told you the kind of society and sector and all that stuff tell you that all these things are true, that that work is non-negotiable, that you should be able to do it all, that it doesn't fit, that you need quality time, that you should be looking after your self-care as well, so you shouldn't work when you're tired. It tells you all these [00:09:00] things, but it never brings them into the same place.

Okay, another tangent for you. I'm in tangent mode. Um, another tangent for you. This is the same in my opinion as universities that tell themselves they need to be world-leading research institutions, that they need to be world leading student recruitment and student delivery organizations, and they need to be impacting like the real stuff out there in the world. And they need to have good staff wellbeing and they need to come in under budget and they need to do all these things. And all the people, the vice chancellor of this and the vice chancellor of that and the vice chancellor of something else, never actually get in one place and go, okay, well how much of us is there to go around? And how much of our staff is there to go around and how do we actually do all of these things? 'Cause these things all sound great and you know, we believe them, right? They're true. They feel true. But they can't all be true. We can't have good staff wellbeing and have healthy budgets and do all of the [00:10:00] things. We can't. And we get angry with our universities for not realizing this. We get mad at them for not seeing, there's only so much of you to go around, yet we do it to ourself.

We don't sit and recognize there's only so much of us to go around and that something here has to give. Now you might be slightly surprised by the options I give you in a minute. So stay with me 'cause this is not gonna be your standard. You just need to learn to say, no. This is not, it's not. I mean that there, there is some of that, right?

We do need to learn to say no, but this is not just about that. This is way broader than that. So what we need to, we pause, we breathe. We recognize that holding these contradictory beliefs is completely exhausting. And then we just try to open ourselves up to the possibility that some of these beliefs might not be true [00:11:00] or not completely true or not as true as we are telling ourselves that they are.

And that indeed they, they can't be 'cause they contradict each other. Because if it absolutely is true that you can't do academic writing during the day and you can't do academic writing on evenings and weekends, then you don't have time to do academic writing and we need to stop telling you that you do.

It means you don't have time. Now, I don't believe that necessarily 'cause I think there's other things that give, but if all those things are true, then you don't have time. Therefore we need to stop telling ourselves that we should be able to. Alternatively, we have to stop telling ourselves that every part of our other commitments are equally important and equally non-negotiable.

We need to stop telling ourselves that we can't work in short blocks, and this one's a difficult one, and I know some [00:12:00] of you'll come at me for it. We also need to stop telling ourselves that we can't write when we're tired. Okay? Now, those of you who know me, I am a big believer in work life balance. Not necessarily work rest balance, but certainly work fun balance. I'm a big proponent of that. But if you are somebody who has a very busy academic job or who has chosen to do a PhD part-time on the side of a full-time job. We might have to accept that you need to write when you're tired, and that might sound like a recipe for burnout, but it's actually, I don't think it is, because I think there is a huge difference when you accept that you have to write when you're tired, then we stop telling ourselves that we shouldn't be tired. We stop telling ourselves that we need to work out how to have more energy.

We stop telling ourselves, oh, well, I'll just leave it [00:13:00] for tonight. I'm feeling too tired to do it. And instead we start asking ourselves much more important questions, which is, how can I be kind to myself while doing this tired? How can I make this feel achievable by doing this tired? How do I set myself up to be able to do this in a way that's realistic? So one of my members is doing a PhD alongside a full-time job, and she talked about getting up early to do hers as probably her only plausible option, and we explored a bunch of other options and I asked her a bunch of questions to sort of challenge her assumptions, but we kind of got to a place where it was like, yeah, I think this might be.

You know, in the long term there might be other adjustments to make to your work commitments and things like that, but as things stand right now, it sounds like this might be your best option. So then we started talking about how do we then make that feel gorgeous? How do we make that feel like it's your little pocket of time where you are doing this thing [00:14:00] that you love in a way that feels lovely and gorgeous for you? Rather than waking up early and sort of going, oh, I shouldn't be having to do this right now. I'm so tired. I'm just gonna be absolutely exhausted all day now. I really shouldn't have to do this, and it has to be a better way than this. No one else has to do this, da, da, da. If we layer in all that, it's suddenly so much worse than if we say, you know what? With what I've taken on and the commitments I have, this is kind of how it's gonna work, and I can make that gorgeous.

And then we also spent some time thinking about what happens at the other end of the day in order to make that possible. Were there changes she could make in how her evenings went that would make those early mornings feel more positive for her and more achievable and more sustainable in the long term?

So if you find yourself in this box, we pause and we start to sort of pull apart some of the assumptions. Is it really [00:15:00] true that everything you spend time on during the day absolutely has to be done? Another member said that, absolutely, it all has to be done. And I asked, is there a research component in your job? This is an academic who's doing a PhD. Is there a research component in your job? And she said, yes. And I said, but we're not doing that. Then she says, no, I don't have time. And I said, but why is it that bit that goes, why do we have to say yes to every single administrative ask to every single student query, to every teaching piece, to every preparation piece?

Why do we have to say yes to all of those? Because we couldn't possibly say no because it's part of our job, but we are saying no to this other bit of our job that's doing research. Now some of you'll be going, yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, if I've got a class of students in front of me, I've gotta be able to teach them. I can't just not be prepared for it. And you are absolutely right and that's why we are not thinking in kind of black and white. [00:16:00] I'm just not gonna do any of that stuff. But I also know for a fact because I've been where you are, I've been my colleagues, I've worked with hundreds of people in this situation.

I almost guarantee there are things that you are spending more time on than you need to in the rest of your commitments, that there are times where you are like, oh, well I don't have time to start writing anyway. I might as well just perfect these PowerPoint slides a little bit more. I might as well just do a bit more of this.

I have an episode. If you haven't listened to it already, it's called eight Ways you're Secretly Procrastinating and Doing stuff you have to do for your job or for other people is a way of procrastinating sometimes, because it's actually a lot easier than the academic writing that you need to do.

I know I sound like I'm being really mean to you here, but it's true. Okay. And I say it with love. Um. It is a form of procrastination. Other people see it. Other people are grateful for it. We feel capable of it. We feel [00:17:00] resourced to do it. Of course, we're gonna do that before this big amorphous get started on introduction that you've got written on your to-do list.

Okay? And if you still have things like that written on your to-do list, you have to keep an eye out for, I think it's next month's free coaching because I'm gonna do a session about to-do lists and how we all have to get much, much better. But often what we're telling ourselves about what we have to do for work isn't entirely true.

It could have some little cracks that we can just get our fingers into and pull apart and go, you know what? There is this bit that I could probably do a bit less, or I could do a bit slower or a bit less often. I could give my apologies to this meeting every third time or whatever. Okay. 

Also if one of the beliefs you're telling yourself is that you can't work in short chunks of time, we have to figure out a way [00:18:00] to make that not true. Because if you are somebody who is working full time trying to manage household, potentially a family, a social life, hobbies, et cetera, then we're probably gonna be waiting quite a long time for these big chunks of time. And when they come, we're then gonna be overwhelmed and we're gonna feel like it's gonna take us four hours to get back into the head space and then the days disappeared and we beat ourselves up for not having used it enough.

So we need to dig into that little belief. Is it really true that you can't do things in small chunks of time or could boss you, the version of you that plans the version of you that makes decisions and strategizes could boss you plan things that could be done in a small chunk of time.

That planning piece maybe needs a little bit more headspace. The really difficult conceptual work that needs to happen maybe needs a little bit more headspace, but sometimes one of the best ways to get Headspace is be in it little and often in [00:19:00] amongst other things, so that it's percolating in your brain.

All of these beliefs, I can't fit in 'cause my other commitments, can they change? Probably I can't work in small bunk chunks of time. You probably can learn to and to be fair, and again, I mean this with love, you're probably gonna have to. Same as people. And like I say, I didn't do the whole baby thing myself. I've inherited stepchildren when they are very capable. But those of you who have done the baby making thing yourself, know that you find pockets of time that you never realized were there. If you are trying to fit things in between, keeping a tiny human alive, okay, you are gonna have to figure out how to do some of these things in small amounts of time. 

And some of this might be accepting that there might be chunks of your time when the thought I have to, and should be able to find time for my writing might actually not be true. If you've listened to this whole episode and you've gone, yeah, Vic, but you don't know [00:20:00] my situation. In my situation, i've got this and I've got that and I've got this and I've got that, and this is non-negotiable and my health's non-negotiable, and that's non-negotiable.

And nothing you've said changes. No, there are no small gaps. There is no way. Then the thought that you need to challenge is the thought that you have to be doing this. That you should be doing it. Because if it's genuinely true that none of the other things can give, then maybe we need to think about delaying, deferring, reducing the expectations in terms of the writing or the PhD, and that can be really hard to accept.

And this is why we often say stuck in that box is because it's hard to accept that we are going to have to face some discomfort here. The discomfort might be working when you're tired. The discomfort might be saying no to a colleague and risking upsetting them. The discomfort might be turning up for a teaching session [00:21:00] broadly prepared, but not entirely.

I was quite good at that back in the day. But the discomfort might be also saying, you know, I don't have time for this right now. I need to take a leave of absence. I need to accept that that article can't happen until later or whatever. And that can be difficult, and it's because accepting that discomfort is difficult, that we stay stuck in the box.

So my kind of take home for you all is recognize. Recognize if this resonates with you. Recognize if you feel trapped in that box. Take a second. To just challenge some of your beliefs just a little bit and see if there are cracks in there. See which of these things you might have to accept are not quite as true as you said they were as you believed they were.

I got one more bit I want to add here. And I have no idea whether this is gonna edit seamlessly in or not. 'cause frankly I'm recording it after I've edited the original one because as I was listening I could hear [00:22:00] your voices in my head. Apparently I can do that. Who knew? Anyway, what I want to add here is be very, very careful what you are prioritizing here. 'Cause I can imagine people too who are saying, I can't do this. I can't change my commitments to others. I can't dah, dah, dah and therefore it is gonna have to be my PhD that gives, it is gonna have to be my academic writing that's gonna have to wait. And I wanna remind you there's two sides to that story. On one side that might be true and you could be perfectly okay the other side of that decision. But I also wanna remind you, don't just jump to that decision. If you are somebody who always prioritizes other people, if you are somebody who always puts their needs before yours, struggles to say, no, I can't do that for you 'cause I'm doing this for me. I want you to be really, really careful [00:23:00] before you take the oh well writing or just have to wait till the summer approach. It's a difficult approach 'cause the summer brings a whole load of other challenges that we've talked about before. But also because if that's your go-to, if never doing the things that progress your interests and your ambitions and goals, if that's your go-to, we need to look at that discomfort too.

Maybe we need to be considering what things you definitely can disconnect from, you can do less well. You can accept that you're no longer the go-to person for, so that this stuff that's for you does fit and that can sometimes be the most uncomfortable of all to face, that you do want to do this work and that you are good at this work and that the world wants to read this damn thing that you are trying to write.

That means that [00:24:00] there are things that you are gonna have to move away from. Okay? So if when I said, maybe finally you may have to accept, you don't have time, your brain went, oh, okay. Relief. Okay. That's an option that I'm willing to take 'cause it's sacrificing myself and not sacrificing other people. Again, pause, breathe. Do not make that the default option here.

Because there's discomfort in saying no to other people. That feels awful at the moment and feels like it goes against your whole sense of self of being this good person. But I want you to think of the discomfort in the future. The potential discomfort there is if you only make that decision because you are not willing to let down anybody else, because of this self-perceived, self-created notion that you have to put other people before yourself. You don't. If people wanna read your research, you wanna do your research, and that can be reason enough to say no. No. That bit's the non-negotiable bit, [00:25:00] however uncomfortable it is, I'm gonna find the other cracks. I'm gonna find other things to give because this bit that I want to do, that's my non-negotiable bit.

From there, we make a little bit of a plan, not a grand plan. Do not go and buy a planner. Do not decide to color code it. People were in one of my workshops where we were talking about shape of the Day and they actually popped up in the chat and said, sorry, Vikki haven't been listening for the last 10 minutes. 'Cause I was color coding my calendar. We are not doing that, people. They got the looks. It's exactly what I would've done. I get it entirely. But we're not doing that. We don't need a grand plan. We need a little plan. A little plan. So my challenge for you is to look at this week, look at the assumptions you're making about this week, and see whether there's one little place where you could do something slightly different than you usually tell yourself is possible.

Where you can say to your family, you know what, I'm not hanging out with you on a Thursday night. Sorry, dude. It's got things to do. I'll [00:26:00] be, I'll be out, I'll be a cafe. You could feed yourself whatever, whatever it might be, right? Think if there's one place this week that you can go, you know what?

I'm just not gonna believe the things about that that I usually believe. And then let me know how it goes. If you're not already on my newsletter, why not? Please go to my website, the PhD life coach.com. Make sure you're signed up. That's how you all know about all the free workshops that I do, it's how you get to ask me questions. It's how you get to suggest topics for future podcasts. So make sure you're on the newsletter and if you are, reply to the email. Let me know whether this has resonated with you and what you are gonna challenge this week to look at slightly differently than you have done in the past. I really hope today has been useful. I know it was for my members. Thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next week.