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Today's episode has a tool that has helped more people finish with the less structure and costs $0. Let's talk about sending regular update emails!
📍 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. And in season two, I'll introduce you to various tools that might make the hard stuff from writing to managing your time to taking care of your brain just a little bit easier.
And if you rate and review this podcast, by the end of the month, you'll be entered to win a free session for me. More details at the end of the episode. Now let's get into the good stuff. .
Now not everything from the business world is worth emulating. I don't think we need to have required work hours or complex organizational structures or. Mid-year confusing performance review cycles, but there are a couple of things that can be really useful for you, especially if you're in a place where you feel like you are throwing your day-to-day work into a void. No one sees it. No one cares.
Sending a regular update email is basically a mechanism that lets you quickly update your status to in business, speak your stakeholders. But in reality, your advisors, maybe your co-authors. Now. Why would I recommend an email when so many people are like, I love the fact that I can hide from my supervisor for months at a time?
Or I love the fact that my coauthors don't bother me until I've passed a deadline. Yeah, for sure. It can be a benefit to have so much autonomy and flexibility, but after years and years of coaching, and also seeing this behavior in myself, I know that sending those regular update emails actually reduces anxiety in most cases, rather than adding to it.
So let's talk about how to use this magical tool or email updates, how often to use it, who can really benefit from it and what you can do if sending these emails to supervisors, it feels a little bit out of reach.
So the first thing to decide is how often you'd like to send your update emails. There is a type of meeting in some companies called a standup meeting where everyone gathers around and updates the rest of the team on their progress. These happen usually every day, sometimes a little bit less frequently. In no universe am I suggesting that you send a email to your advisor every day to let them know what you've done and what you're going to do the next day.
It would be a lot of email for you to send and a lot of email for your supervisor to receive. But sending an email like that on a regular basis can help for a variety of reasons. I think that sending an email every two weeks is the sweet spot for most people. Two weeks is enough time to kind of smooth the edges of the really high highs and the really low lows. It's not so long that you can close your eyes, wake up and wow. A whole semester has gone.
Every two weeks, you know, twice a month is an excellent cadence. And since it's not tied to the term deadline, It can make it feel a little bit less stressful because you're updating sometime other than the first week of classes or the last week of classes, which is when I find that most supervisors remember that they have advisees and email them in some state of panic, low to high about where their progress is, which can be some of the worst weeks to get those emails as a student, because you're either really busy kicking off your class or winding it down.
Or having some sort of feeling about the next term beginning or ending.
If you wait for your advisor to email you, you don't get to control the timing. If you email them with the updates, then you get to control it. So two weeks works really well for most people. You might want to speed it up and do once a week on Fridays or on Mondays if you are in a really high production season, like say getting close to your defense or prospectus defense. And you might slow it down if you are say in the field and really busy, and there aren't that many updates, but the first step is to pick that cadence.
The second step is to pick the format. So I really enjoy having a format for these emails so that you don't have to sit down and create a whole new document every single time. I like these questions, which I have borrowed from the standup meeting that inspired this particular tool.
Here's what I've done since the last time that you've updated is the first question. It's basically your done list. Here are all of my accomplishments, big and small. It's also a place to put anything that you've done that was maybe unexpected. Like, oh, I dropped everything to get a CFP ready that I just found out about, or my revisions came back from the journal and I did those. Great time to say, here's what I've actually done.
Second question is here's where I'm blocked. This can be a really powerful question to share with your advisor because it helps you name what feels so sticky right now. Like I'm blocked because I feel like there's so much reading that I need to do before I can get done, or I'm blocked because this important piece of lab equipment broke and now I'm two weeks behind on my experimental schedule. Or I'm blocked because I'm having some health issues or mental health issues.
You can be as honest or as transparent as you'd like to be, but naming those things helps you. And it also gives your advisor more of a clear picture so that they don't think that the reason that you're not working is just because you chose not to. I've never seen any graduate student who is repeatedly just choosing not to work and ignoring the stakes. It just doesn't happen.
So you might as well share the reasons if you know them and if you feel comfortable.
And then the last, the third question that I love to include in these updates is what you plan to do next. I plan to finish the outline or I plan to have the first section drafted by my next check-in. It gives that sense of kind of moving forward accountability. It's a little bit of a deadline.
Those three questions. Here's what I've done. Here's where I'm blocked. And here's what I'm going to do next are simple enough that you can remember them, but you could also put them in a document if you want. I know people who make Gmail templates and then just fill them out. But that formula, it means that you aren't sort of inventing what to share. You just open up the email, you answer your three questions, you send it off. That gives your advisor the information that they need to know. And it forces you into a little bit of a moment of reflection and adjustment, which is so helpful, especially if you're doing it regularly.
So the last tip that I have about the actual email itself is that to the extent to which you feel comfortable and supported in doing so: be honest. So many supervisors are wanting to help, but not really having transparency into the workflow of their advisees. Most supervisors, most of the time, want you to finish and want you to finish well and they want you to do so in a supported way. But the more information that you give them about what's actually happening day to day, the more that they can support you. There's less that they can do when they chase you down after a draft is overdue by two or three months, right?
That would be a difficult situation for anyone. So if you share with them more regularly, What you're getting done, what things are easy and what things are hard. You might have more access to their expertise and their mentorship than you might've otherwise had. So. If you can, if you feel supported and if it feels safe, be honest.
And because you send them regularly, it smooths out over time. Here's one email where I didn't get anything done, but next two weeks. I did. And that can help you feel a little bit more confident, too.
I find that people who have what I call set it and forget it, advisors or collaborators really benefit from this. So if you have an advisor who's extremely hands-off or they kind of meet with you once a term, and then they say, go forth and do it. They might not offer this tool to you, but if you ask them like, Hey, I think it would really benefit me if I sent this email, even if you don't reply.
That can be really helpful. Just so that they have a little bit more visibility into your process. They can intervene when they want to, but you get what is the second and honestly, most important benefit of this tool, which is that you get that sense of like a mini deadline.
So every two weeks, when it's your Friday email day, it forces you to kind of like push to get to that next level. Or it gives you a gentle bit of encouragement. So when you get close to email day, knowing that you have to report your progress gives you the opportunity to do a little bit of a mini deadline push, which can feel really motivating for a lot of us. Deadlines work for a reason. So giving yourself a lower stakes, but regularly occurring deadline to update on your progress can be really helpful. It increases communication and increases for you the sense that somebody cares about your work, which honestly is so much more motivating.
Last idea. If it sounds too intense or your advisor is on sabbatical or there's a variety of other reasons why your official supervisor or chair or advisor isn't open to, or isn't a great place to send these updates.
There's lots of other people that you can send them to instead. I love sending them to friends or to colleagues or to other peer supports, maybe other people in your lab you could do this with. I know people who have been emailing their accountability buddies every day or every week for years.
There's a reason why so many coaching communities are built on this kind of update structure. And there are a lot of people that you can email if your advisor or supervisor isn't the best fit for this tool.
We talk a lot about accountability in the coaching world, in the grad student world. Like you must be accountable to your own deadlines. And if it's helpful, this is my definition of accountability. I define accountability, not as doing what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it, no matter what.
I actually define it is making your work and the decisions that shape your work, what you did when you did and how visible. First to yourself and then to other people.
Accountability means bringing that visibility for yourself and for other people. And the more that you know, what you're doing and why more regularly, instead of waiting until a crisis point, like a missed deadline or a funding crunch to do that sort of reflection, only benefits you. Whether you send it to your advisor, your friends, or just out into the void, like Bella sent those emails to Edward in the second Twilight movie. So thanks so much for listening. I am so excited about a couple of the things that are upcoming.
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Bye.
📍 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. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!