The PhD Life Coach

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 unpick the self-talk that makes this more painful than it needs to be, I introduce the concept of “thinking writing” and give you some specific tasks to experiment with. I don’t promise to stop you feeling confused - but I will move you from “confused and that’s a problem” to “confused and that’s OK and I know exactly what to do next”.  

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on Why Word Count Goals Don't Work for PhD Writing – And What to Do Instead

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 to manage our minds. Instead we either indulge these thoughts (ie we believe them and look for evidence they're true) or we admonish ourselves for having them (ie we tell ourselves "we're our own worst enemy"). In this episode I'll give you a very practical (and slightly silly) technique to help you develop a more kind, compassionate, and firm inner voice. And it involves Winnie the Pooh...

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on how to coach yourself and why you should.

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 think about how we can notice our negative self-talk and start to be our own best supervisor. 

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on how do I stop beating myself up in hindsight?

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 own worries, strategize for success, and leave feeling proud of yourself.  

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on what to do if you fail an annual review or milestone. 

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 you can improve things so much without expecting them to change at all - find out how in this episode! 

***NOTE - this is NOT talking about abusive, problematic and/or unacceptable supervision. I talk about this more in episode 19 of season 1 - What to do (and think) if you have a toxic relationship with your supervisor. The strategies in this episode are mainly focused on enhancing supervisory relationships that just don't feel as good as they could right now.  

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on How to manage your supervisor or boss.

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 academia can be a particularly lonely place, and give some tangible tips that you can use to make it all feel a bit better. 

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on seven things I’ve learned this year that might help you too (one of the things is about community!)

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 outside of academia and the barriers there might be to building a community. I then go through some really simple tips to help you build an academic community, step by step. 

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on Ten lessons I learned about doing PhDs by playing Stardew Valley (no particular connection but I love this episode!

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 because I think there’s a lot to learn here not just for how we organise our summers but also how we plan our time and our priorities more generally.

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on why we should think about our career in phases. 

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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 a summer any more. This is the first of two episodes considering how we can make the summer ours again and enjoy this part of the academic year. Today we're talking about the benefits of combining some "acceptance" with some "resistance" so that this doesn't feel more painful than it needs to!  

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-improvement should actually look like and even more misunderstandings about the specific tool of timeblocking. In this episode, I share five things you may well be misunderstanding and what I think you should do instead. 

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode with author Kirsty Sedgman on being unreasonable.

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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.

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show!

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-improvement should actually look like and even more misunderstandings about the specific tool of timeblocking. In this episode, I share five things you may well be misunderstanding and what I think you should do instead. 

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on seven mistakes academics make and how to avoid them.

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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.