The Grad Student Coach

When an advisor is thinking abstractly and a student is in charge of implementation, a particular type of under-communication can happen that can cause headwind in the form of wasted effort and lost time. We shine some sunlight on this and point the way to a solution. Also, we have the second installment of the Expectation Dashboard "Question of the Week"

In this episode, I skip around a bit with shorter segments. I talk through the experience of having my model challenged by new information and how I worked through that. I begin a new feature: the Expectation Dashboard "question of the week". Finally I talk through in detail what my Patreon site is all about, and what your support there will enable me to do.

We can get trapped in dis-empowering thought patterns that magnify fear about something in the future or anger about something in the past, and this can cause significant drag - having consequences for both our collaborations and our future. In this episode, I talk through the mechanics of these thought loops and the emotions around them, and offer a way out.

Some people have had the experience of freezing-up when speaking to a group in a meeting or giving a talk to a larger audience. I'm one of those people, and have developed a technique to help myself recover in that moment so that I can find my way back into the story I was telling.

We finish up our three part series focused on confrontation over ideas by expanding the notion of emotive distortion to the "distortion field". We go through more examples, take a tour of the many implications, even address some skepticisms that may arise. As the title suggests, we get into some interesting territory.

Last week we looked at why we resist others' ideas. This week we look at others' resistance to what we say. How we express an idea - the shape of that story - can sometimes inspire resistance to it or even lead the other person to misunderstand it. How can we ensure that what is interpreted by the listener is what we are intending to convey? How can we structure what we say in a way that keeps the listener's mind open? We introduce the "The No-Person Point of View" - a technique that honors the constraints of our brain wiring to accomplish both goals.

We begin a series on confrontation/conflict by first focusing on how to work through difference over ideas. This episode begins that journey by looking into the causes, both conscious and subconscious, that lead us to resisting the ideas of others.

This episode we focus on distractions - the things that come up that interrupt our train of thought, and undermine our productivity. As a case study I talk through how I was able to help a student who had become stuck, unable to progress in her final year of PhD work, primarily because she felt compelled to immediately answer every text that came in from her circle of friends. She was suffering from headwind (her progress was being slowed by a an external circumstance) and drag (she was reluctant to speak to her friends about it). It was time for some re-framings.

Our sense of self arises from the stories about ourselves that our brain has written and reinforced over time. When faced with a challenge, the feelings and thoughts that "come to mind" first in a given situation belong to the story with the strongest emotions attached. Some of these stories are negative and judgmental, and can become blown out of proportion, trapping in a landscape of dis-empowerment. Anchor Management can set us free.

The pandemic has made us more isolated than ever, and has many of us working across video connections rather than in person. How can we get back that deeper sense of connection we have when we are in each others' presence?