episode 4 - why is it so hard to stay excited about your work?
Has your project lost that sparkle? Are you just not excited about your work the way you used to be? Do you worry that everyone else is passionately in love with their research and you're the only one who has to bribe yourself to get to the desk?
You are definitely not the only one - and this episode goes into why it is so hard to stay excited about your work, and some things you can do to bring that spark back!
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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!
All right this week, let's talk about why it is so hard to stay in love with your project. And to be clear, I'm using love here as a shorthand for staying curious about your project, feeling engaged, feeling that sparkle of, "oh my gosh! I can't wait to know what's going to happen next." It's just a little bit easier and faster for me to stay under 10 minutes if I call that love.
But let's talk about why it can be so hard to keep that feeling going with your PhD work.
First thing that I think makes it really hard is that these projects take so long. It's really easy to stay invested and curious about a paper that you work on for two weeks or a book that you pick up to read over the weekend. But when we're talking about projects that can last for months, years, (and even longer, I won't scare any of us anymore by saying anything longer than years) but when they last that long, it can be really hard to stay engaged, just like it can be really hard in any longterm relationship. To find that newness, that spark. That little bit of something extra.
As we know the butterflies, they wear off! The first day of dissertation writing feels amazing and day 342 feels a little bit less amazing.
And if you ever get in your head about the idea that maybe it feels this amazing for everyone else, or maybe everybody else is engaged in and passionate about their work. And that must mean that theirs is better than mine! Then, yeah, this can feel really hard to feel like "I used to be so excited and now I'm not feeling that anymore."
And while I want to acknowledge that things like burnout exist -- and that's probably a subject for a whole season of these podcast episodes. -- There is also just that emotional change from "this is an amazing paper that I'm so excited to work on" into "this is a project that's going on over years, that in some ways I'm getting paid for" however little that might be. And it's just as much a job as it is anything else.
But even that pressure to have a dream job can really feel intense some days. I don't know about you, but I was raised to believe that jobs, like a dream job were the goal for me. I needed to find a job that it didn't feel like I was working a day in my life. Because if you love it, then it never feels like work. It always feels amazing.
Add in the academic extra flavor of "This is my calling. I was made to do this. This research was born for me." Then that can be a lot of pressure too! What happens when you wake up and you're calling feels like just something else that you're doing on another random Tuesday in your life.
I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with being passionate and many of these experiments as we'll talk about in a minute are geared to help you sort of rekindle that spark a little bit, but I'm saying that pressure to have a dream job, to feel passionate about it can make it even harder when we are going through the natural ups and downs, the closeness, the distance that -- spoiler alert -- many people feel with their projects all of the time. So, if you were listening to this wondering, "am I the only one who feels like this is a project that I'm bored with? This is a piece of scholarship that I am sick of." I absolutely want to assure you that you are not.
And that part of the project of being a scholar is figuring out how to believe in that project, on those random Tuesdays, the good days, the hard days, the boring days in the middle, how to keep that relationship between you and your research, active enough to help you get done what you need to get done.
So now that we've acknowledged that no one is head-over-heels passionate about their project every single day of every single year of their entire scholarly life, let's get into how this feeling or lack thereof might be showing up for you right now. Because I think that there's a lot of data to help you figure out how you can feel a little bit closer to your project by digging into how you feel about it right now.
So grab your notebooks, maybe take a deep breath. Let's get in to those questions.
Question number one. Describe a spark between you and your research. Where were you? What did it feel like? What happened to make that spark of, Ooh, this is interesting, or I can't wait to know more about this or wouldn't this be great for X project? How did that spark happen? Bonus points if you have a sense of what you did to keep that spark going, if you did.
Question two. How close do you feel to your research right now? Do you feel like two people writing love letters back and forth, and half of them get lost in the ocean? Do you feel like the project is a friend or relationship of yore that you've totally outgrown, but don't know how to break up with? There's all sorts of stories that we can tell about our relationship to our work, but the story and language that you reach for to tell this story are significant.
What does the choice of narrative frame that you apply to tell that story, tell you about how you feel about it or how you feel you're acting in that two part relationship between you and your work.
and third:
What parts of your work light you up the most? How does it feel when you do those things that really set your heart on fire? How long does that feeling last? And what does that feeling of being lit up by your work make possible? In your day-to-day routines - does it make it easier to get through some of the hard stuff?
But what is working between you and your work in the relationship this moment? What are the parts that light you up the most?
Alright! You've got your data. You've maybe gone a little bit deeper into this relationship between you and your work. And now let's try some experiments to bring you and your work just a little bit closer, some of the time. And maybe even more than that.
Experiment number one. I'm calling this , as gently as possible, change your attitude.
When I was little and - unfortunately I lost him when I was five - but my papa used to say, "that's why they call it work and not play time." And while he's not around to repeat that back to me, when I'm complaining about how hard work feels anymore, that phrase pops into my head all of the time, because there's a certain amount of truth in it.
And especially as graduate students, what used to be some of the best and most exciting parts of our lives, the school, the classes. Uh, the excitement, the discussions, the feeling alive with the possibility and knowledge of it all!!!! Well, that's kind of translated into picking up books from the library, emailing people back and forth, trying to deal with all the administrative things that come along with publishing and research.
And it's just not as fun as it used to be anymore. But that's part of the transition from this is what it was like to do it as a student; and this is what it's like to do it as a professional. So as this experiment goes on. Be able to kind of check in with what expectations you're setting for yourself about how it should feel.
Do you think it should feel more exciting than that? Do you think that you should love every single part of it or else you don't deserve to do the research? But take a look at your attitude, as gently and as supportive as you possibly can, and see if you're setting expectations for yourself that are really hard to meet, especially with work that's as difficult and challenging and rewarding as this.
Experiment number two is to widen your perspective. I often use the metaphor that any scholarly project is sort of like climbing up a mountain. You maybe have someone who's climbed up a mountain before, maybe you have a map. Maybe there's a series of base camps. But no matter where you are on that mountain: It's hard. It's steep. It's challenging.
And if you are looking up every two seconds or if you're keeping your eyes on the peak of that mountain, well, it's really easy to trip, right? Take this from the world's most clumsy hiker that there's a certain benefit in keeping your eyes on your feet. Not all the time! Obviously you need to see what's coming sometimes, and it can be helpful to look back and notice how far you've gone already.
But if you're finding yourself really overwhelmed by the project and just how much of it there is to go - which can often be one of the roots of these feelings - then take a moment to look down at your feet. What would it look like for the next week or maybe two to zoom as far in, as you possibly can? What are the next five tasks that you can do? What are the smallest pieces that you can put on your list?
It's not that the rest of the mountain goes away when you do that, you're still going to be climbing. It just means that you're shifting your perspective to the pieces that feel achievable in the rhythm that you're actually living, which is the day-to-day.
And the third experiment to try is one of my favorites.
Take your writing your project, your research out for a date night. I don't mean that as romantic, like I said, but it can really help to change your surroundings. So maybe you take your work and you print it out and you sit outside on that wonderful coffee shop patio that has been open since the pandemic.
And you reread your draft. You reread it away from your email, away from your notes, away from that stack of books that need to go back to the library, and you just sit with it. What do you like about it? What is exciting? What sparks do you feel when you get there?
Maybe you change your surroundings by joining a writing club or you start a seminar series in your department, or you meet with a friend every so often to catch up on some of the coolest, you know, research that you're doing. But find a way to kind of shake up that surrounding just a little bit. If you like, so many of us have been stuck at a desk on your couch doing the same thing over and over again, find a way that feels safe and protected and doesn't endanger anybody else to shake it up a little bit. You might be surprised how different your work feels when you do it.
No matter what you find or what you try in the course of this little relationship refresh between you and your research, I hope that you remember that part of what makes this so hard is that this is a long term relationship. And like any long-term relationship between siblings or friends or partners, it takes some effort to maintain it.
It takes some effort to make sure that the two of you are growing and supporting each other as you are now, and not just as you were in the beginning, or as you hope that you were going to feel. So I hope this brings you a little bit closer and I can't wait to see you next time!
📍 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!