Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Whether you're a PhD student or an academic, it can be really hard to plan how to fit your writing into your busy schedule. In this episode we're joined by Jo VanEvery, founder of the Academic Writing Studio, to think about how to plan what writing you do when and how to prioritise it when so many things feel important. If you're watching this when it's first released, you'll also see an announcement of our new webinar! **** You can find ...
Apr 22, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 32
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! It's that time of year when academics and PhD students are coming back after Easter/Spring break and trying to get back into the swing of uni life. Whether you spent the holiday having a "real" break, catching up on work you wanted to do, organising work you wish you didn't have to do, or just procrastinating, this is the episode for you. We'll think about why feeling the dread makes it hard to get going and what you can do instead. Let's...
Apr 15, 2024•33 min•Season 2Ep. 31
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! If you have items on your to do list that you aren't doing, you need this episode! We're going to talk about how to break your work down into manageable chunks. Everyone says we should do this, but no one really tells us how to do it. What is a manageable chunk anyway? How big should it be? What should that look like? What type of chunk will make it easier for us to get started? If you're procrastinating or overwhelmed by your to do list,...
Apr 08, 2024•33 min•Season 2Ep. 30
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Everyone makes mistakes. It's inevitable that we're going to make mistakes. But one of the most important things is to be able to recognize what mistakes we're making, figure out why we're making them, and if appropriate, move away from that pattern of mistake. So in today's episode, I'm going to be telling you seven mistakes that I see lots of PhD students and academics making that I want you to check that you're not making too. Some of ...
Apr 01, 2024•32 min•Season 2Ep. 29
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! At every stage of the academic journey, people are comparing themselves to those around them and doing it in ways that just doesn't help and where they end up feeling guilty, feeling frustrated, feeling hopeless. Whether you're a first year PhD student looking at the rest of your cohort wondering if you're doing enough or whether you're some kick ass senior professor who's smashing their career, we're still looking across to other labs go...
Mar 25, 2024•26 min•Season 2Ep. 28
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode, you get to hear a live coaching session with Laura! Laura is a part time PhD student who has tried every planning and task management tool possible! She shares that she finds it stressful to even think about planning and is worried about how to manage the last couple of years of her research. I coach her as I would in a private coaching session and we reach some great insights about how Laura is already planning way more ...
Mar 18, 2024•58 min•Season 2Ep. 27
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! How many times have you seen or been on a time management course? How many books and podcasts and blogs and social media posts have you seen about time management? I want you to compare that to how many times you've seen courses and support for energy management. So much less. It's so rare to see people discussing energy management compared to how often we see people talking about time management, and it just doesn't make sense because ti...
Mar 11, 2024•34 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! This week in the podcast, I get real! Some of my clients have told me that they sometimes find the idea of implementing new systems intimidating and they worry they will "fail". In this episode I tell you about the things that I still struggle with and how I got to be ok with that. It's perfect for any perfectionists out there, ideal for anyone who has tried a thousand systems and now considers themselves permanently disorganised, or anyo...
Mar 04, 2024•33 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! If you struggle to plan your time and organise your tasks, this is the episode for you! I'll be sharing what I mean by "boss mode" and showing you how this can help you plan your tasks, stay focused, manage overwhelm and minimise procrastination. ***** 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. My weekly podcast, ...
Feb 26, 2024•33 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! This is the first in a series of episodes where I share a real life coaching session! In this episode, I talk with Ruth, a PhD student, who worries that succeeding in academia relies on having connections, rather than the quality of your work. She agreed to be coached for the podcast and we discuss why this bothers her, how it affects her work, and reach some conclusions that will help her move forwards. When you're listening, make sure t...
Feb 19, 2024•53 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Wouldn't it be nice if sometimes someone just told us that we were doing a good job, that we were enough, that we were doing things well enough and that they were proud of us. And yet so often, that doesn't necessarily happen in academia. Lots of us feel that our supervisors could give us more reassurance, our collaborators or heads of school could give us more reassurance, and it's really hard to keep pushing yourself to work as hard as ...
Feb 12, 2024•26 min•Season 2Ep. 22
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! This is the first time I have ever had to put a spoiler warning on my podcast. I'm so excited. If you have an intention to watch series two of the UK Traitors and you haven't yet seen it, please go listen to a different episode! You don't have to have watched The Traitors for this to be an immensely useful episode, but if, like me, you got a little bit obsessed with The Traitors, then you are going to love this episode Because we're going...
Feb 05, 2024•32 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! How to be a better writer is one of the most common questions asked by PhD students and academics of all levels. While there are tons of useful "how to write" books on the market it can be difficult to translate this learning into actually improving your own writing. In this episode, I talk with writing coach Dr Katy Peplin about ways that you can support yourself to get better at writing and look after yourself at the same time! Hope you...
Jan 29, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Last week we talked about how to manage procrastination in the moment, using my NICE model - that's super useful but are there ways we can prevent procrastination happening so often? I think so, and in this episode I share how building a clearer relationship with your past and future self can really help! Check it out and let me know what you think. To find out more about working with me, go to www.thephdlifecoach.com **** I'm Dr Vikki Wr...
Jan 22, 2024•21 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! It's the biggie! Procrastination! The bane of everyone's lives and common at every level of academia. In this episode, I will help you understand why we procrastinate and then introduce a quick and easy model you can use to help you reduce your procrastination. This episode ended up being way too long, so I've split it in half and you can have the second half next week! **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I...
Jan 15, 2024•28 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode, I'm chatting with Tara Wittin, Head of the University of Birmingham Graduate School and Danielle, who is one of the participants in my university PhD Life Coach membership programme. We talk about how the membership works, what benefits the students get from it, and how it fits with the other student support available at the university. Whether you're a student or an academic, have a listen and hear why consistent long-te...
Jan 08, 2024•46 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! It's new year. We've all got goals. We've all got new year's resolutions and we all have faint memories, maybe strong memories of all the previous times that we've tried to achieve things, and it's just not worked. If that's you, if you have a long history of not achieving the things that you set out in the new year, or achieving different things, or still achieving them but beating yourselves up for all the other things you didn't do, yo...
Jan 01, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Santa completes the biggest project of the year every single year, delivering all those presents all around the world, and I think we can learn a lot from how he does it. This is slightly tongue in cheek, but I still think there's some important lessons in here for anyone studying or working in academia! **** 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 le...
Dec 25, 2023•26 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! I've spent so many holidays where I've kind of intended to do some work but not really planned when or what, and then didn't really feel like it at the time, so I didn't, but I felt guilty about the fact I wasn't working because really I should, in inverted commas, be working, and then I also wouldn't do any of the really fun stuff that I wanted to do either because I should be working so I shouldn't do that stuff. But then when I did wor...
Dec 18, 2023•36 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! On this podcast and in my coaching sessions, I spend a lot of time talking about thoughts. Talking about how the thoughts that we have shape our feelings and actions, and how we can intentionally modify our thoughts, not to just make stuff up, but to focus on thoughts that we already believe, but that we know serve us better, in order to feel better, do the actions we intend to do and achieve our goals. So there's lots of focus on thought...
Dec 11, 2023•25 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! If you're listening to this in real time, it's the beginning of December and we are on the final run in to the winter holidays. One of the things that has really stuck out to me recently is how many of my clients need to hear the same things. So this week I'm going to be talking about five things that I think you need to hear right now! Let's go! **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD ...
Dec 04, 2023•23 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! If you're trying really hard to kind of look after yourself and stay on top of your own stress levels, but you're finding yourself surrounded by other people who are stressed, other people who are complaining, then this is the perfect episode for you. We are going to be thinking about how can you manage your mind when those around you are losing theirs without needing to push them out of your lives, without needing to solve their problems...
Nov 27, 2023•41 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode, we're going to be talking about all things ADHD with special guest Dr Alex Conner from https://www.adhdadult.uk/. So whether you have it yourself, you think you might have it, you sometimes wonder, or whether you work with, know, or love people who do have ADHD, then you are going to learn so much about how to support yourself and how to support other people. Just to give you a heads up though, before we start there's one...
Nov 20, 2023•55 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Do you hear the word networking and just think that this is the most awful thing ever, or that you're really bad at it, or that you shouldn't have to do it, or it's really hard, or it's not the right time? If so, you are going to love this episode because we're going to tell you all the reasons you're wrong. I have a guest with me, Dr Jen Polk, and we are going to be talking all things networking. Find out more at www.thephdlifecoach.com ...
Nov 13, 2023•53 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Have you got your PhD viva coming up soon? Or is it something that you're already starting to dread even though it's a few years away? If so, this is the perfect episode for you. We're going to be thinking about all the stories about PhD vivas, how we can prepare for them, and how we can look after ourselves in that process. You get to decide how we do this and I'm going to help you figure out how. **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor a...
Nov 06, 2023•40 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode, an ex-client Marie is telling us about the "perfect weekly meeting" that she developed during our time coaching together. She uses this to set the tone for her week and it's really changed how she feels and how she gets stuff done. It's so much more than a to-do list, and instead really gets to the core of how to start a week with intention. Hope you find it useful! **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified lif...
Oct 30, 2023•41 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! If you're a regular listener, you're going to have heard me talk about self coaching, about exploring the thoughts that we have and the impact that they have on our emotions and our actions and the things that we achieve. I thought it would be really useful to have a single episode where I actually take you through the principles of self coaching, why we do it, how we do it, and how you can start incorporating it into your lives and the b...
Oct 23, 2023•37 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Every single one of us will have written to a word count at some point in our academic careers. Often as undergraduates, the struggle is to write enough words to hit the word count, but as we get further through our academic careers, the challenge increasingly becomes to stay under the word count. So if you've ever struggled to shorten your work to meet the requirements of your submission to your degree program or to a journal, then this ...
Oct 16, 2023•39 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! When was the last time you learned something outside of your academic work that you then used within your academic work? I think it's time for another one of those tenuous links between two things that are seemingly unrelated, but actually are connected much more than you think. So in this episode, I'm going to be talking about nine things I learned planning my wedding that might be useful in your PhD too. You can find out more about work...
Oct 09, 2023•34 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Our professional relationships with the people who supervise or manage us can have huge implications for how much we achieve and how much we enjoy our academic work. Yet often we can be quite passive about it - "they are how they are" and we just have to cope with it. In this episode, I'll share some straightforward ways that you can "manage" the people above you to make it more efficient and more fun for everyone involved. If you want to...
Oct 02, 2023•26 min•Season 2Ep. 3
