episode 1 - why is getting started so hard?
In our first episode, we go with the obvious - how hard it is to get started. If you've ever been frustrated by how long it takes you to get going in the morning, or after a transition, or you start to tune out when people suggest that you start with the hard things, this is the episode for you!
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Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. We'll talk about why some of these things are so hard, and how that difficulty is showing up for you. Each episode has practical strategies to experiment with -- just because it's hard now doesn't mean it always has to be.
And stay tuned for more details about some free writing resources coming your way in November. But for now let's get into it!
Forgive me the cliche, but I thought we would use episode one to talk about something that I personally find really hard getting started. There are a few reasons why getting started can be so difficult, but one of them is that I think there's this expectation that we'll be able to drop into flow. Like immediately.
You sit down, you flip a switch, and boom, you're generating new knowledge. That is not in my experience, how it works for most people. Most of the time, scholars are constantly transitioning between all different kinds of jobs. One minute you're a teacher, then you're an administrator, then you're on a committee, then you're reading, then you're an editor, then you're a writer, and back again.
Add in any of your human roles and who wouldn't be overwhelmed? But all of those transitions come at a cost. Every time you switch context, you need to, again, switch all of the resources that you're using for your brain, and that can leave even the best of us totally exhausted by lunchtime.
Another thing that's really hard about getting started is the flexibility of it all. One of the perks of academic life, no doubt, is the flexibility that you can start a little bit later on a Tuesday so that you can go to the dentist or do something even more fun or, you know, work really hard during the summer so that you have a little bit more flexibility in the fall.
But all of that flexibility comes at a cost because there's no external structure like a boss or an office or a bunch of coworkers around, that really pressure you into being at a certain place at a certain time . So that flexibility means that you are the one in charge of when to get started, when to stop, and all of that costs valuable executive functioning points.
And lastly, one of the things that I find really hard about getting started is all of the advice about how we should do it. Raise your hand -- I mean, you can if you want to, it's a podcast, so I can't tell -- but raise your hand if you've ever been told to eat the frog. In case you've never heard that before, that's the advice that says, do the hardest thing that you can first thing in the morning. The equivalent of eating a frog, the most disgusting thing on your plate before you eat the good stuff like cookies or potato chips. This, for many people, leads to the notion that we should all sit down at our desks and immediately launch into the hardest thing on our plate, whether that's writing or reading or revising, it can be different for different people.
But the problem with eating the frog is that sometimes it turns into a game of chicken between you and your project. How long can I stay in bed playing Duolingo if my other option is getting to my desk and writing my research paper? I know for me that's a battle that I lose more often than I care to admit.
Part of the advice about working with the hard things, starting early writing at 6:00 AM before everybody else gets up, is that that advice works really well for some people. If you have a really busy schedule, if you're working full time, if you have kids that demand your attention, you know, as soon as they get up, then eating the frog or working early can be really helpful.
But if it doesn't work for you, then it really doesn't work for you.
And so if you're joining me in the legions of us that find getting started a little bit difficult, here are some questions to consider that will give you personalized data about why this might be difficult for you, and give you a few hints about where to start with some of the experiments that we'll talk about in just a few minutes.
So get your journals out. Maybe just go for a walk and think about these questions, but give yourself a chance to reflect. Your answers might surprise you.
First question, How does your body know that it's time to start working? How about your brain, or are you operating under the impression and giving your body the sense that it can be asked to work at any time, in any place, in any condition?
How many times a day do you "start"? Does it vary by the day of the week or by the season or what ever else might be going on in your brain? Your brain weather, your anxiety? How many times a day are you starting and restarting?
And then lastly, what cues you into starting? Is it the time of day, the location? Anxiety? Deadlines and deadlines only? But what is the thing that more often than not, flips the switch into "it's time to start now"?
And now that you have your personalized, shiny, new data about what does and doesn't work for you in terms of starting here are a few experiments to try. Every week, I'll share with you some strategies or tools or simply experiments - a condition to change - that I found to be useful for me or maybe one of my clients. And more than that, I'll tell you why I think that they work and what kinds of situations, people, brains, lives I've seen them be successful in. So try one, try two, try all but do it in a spirit of experimentation. So let's get our Bill Nye on and do some experimenting.
Option one, make a sensory startup ritual. Pick two or three senses to combine into a lightweight ritual to help cure your body into starting. I like to put my feet on the floor, chew a piece of mint gum, and put on a heavy, bass drop laden playlist that I only listen to while writing.
This is a holdover from my graduate student days when I was trying to steal writing sessions away from any place I could. I was writing in between classes, in between my job and work all sorts of times, but because they didn't have temporal consistency, I needed something else. So I would throw gum in my mouth, I would put my playlist on and I would get to work. So I found that this works really well for people who like a sense of routine, they maybe do well with structure, but they're finding that hard temporally. So if time isn't going to be the constant, maybe your sense of smell, your hearing, your sight, the way that you position your body, those could all be anchors.
Experiment number two. Pick no more than three things from your miles long to-do list and put them on a post-it note or another piece of paper. Start there and then repeat as necessary. I find that this strategy works really well for people who get easily overwhelmed. As far as I know, no academic that's being honest, completes their to-do list every single day.
We all have more that we could be doing. So if you are in the habit of dumping out your brain periodically into to do lists that fill notebooks, then this might be helpful for you. You pick two or three things, hopefully ones that line up with your priorities for the day, but you pick them, you put them on a post-it note, you cross them off, you get a new post-it.
I find that this works really well after a meal break, like if you're struggling to get back into work after lunch or another kind of transition. Say you're trying to get into writing after a morning of teaching! But picking a few things and focusing just on those and then repeating as usual can be really helpful.
And experiment number three: set a warmup timer. Personally, I aspire to be a person who can get to deep focus work without checking my email, but I've literally been trying for a decade and I'm just not that girl. So I set a timer for 25 minutes and I warm up. I read the news, I check all of my feeds. I look at my emails. I sometimes make an extra cup of coffee. But knowing that I don't have to do something really hard the instant that I get to my desk makes it so much easier for me not to avoid going to my desk in the first place.
And I know that sometimes my day gets derailed by a little bit of email checking before I do that really hard thing. But for me, the anxiety of not knowing what's in my inbox, so. much. overwhelm when I do that. So I'd rather know what dangers are lurking just behind that Gmail tab, get a sense of what's there, and then plan my day with all of the facts.
And there we have it, a few reasons why getting started is hard, a few questions to help you dig deeper into how that looks for you, and a few things to try just in case they make it a tiny bit easier.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com, where you can also sign up for AcWriMo 2022, a free month of writing support and resources. And if you're liking what you're hearing, please subscribe, rate, and review to help other people find the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!