I Love My Yoga Practice
I have been practicing yoga for many years, for about fifteen to be precise. I got into yoga when a friend bought a series of power yoga DVDs on TellSell. (I know. Always take the classy route.) I would go over to her house weekly and we would practice together, and lounge about on her sofa, chatting and drinking tea in post-yoga bliss afterwards. For me, bliss it is. Yoga really does bring me back to my center, my core. It makes me feel strong and clear, and soft and surrendered at the same time. When I started my practice [...]
Building Momentum: Cultivating Sparks and Getting Things Done
Before I presented my first HappyPhD seminar I booked a coaching session with a public speaking coach. We talked story-telling technique, commanding the energy in a room, and we brainstormed about some aspects of my workshop. The conversation meandered and we ended up talking about creativity, and how to bring your work into being. At this point in the conversation she drew me a stick figure: She told me there are basically two ways to get stuck when you are creating something (and in life. It was that kind of conversation). You may have no ideas, or no inspiration. You [...]
How to Juggle Work and Writing a PhD
One of my HappyPhD clients wrote me to ask whether I had any special advice for people who work part- or fulltime and consequently don’t have the whole day to work on their PhD. She wrote that she felt she always had to ‘squeeze the PhD in somehow’ and felt overwhelmed with the stress of it all. When you’re juggling a job and a PhD we’re talking about an extra constraint you're dealing with: time. It's a hard constraint, a boundary, a limit, which creates extra pressure and stress. None of us like boundaries and constraints. We prefer to be [...]
HappyPhD Contest 2014/ 2015
The new academic year is approaching, and to celebrate I am giving away the HappyPhD self-study course twice! To enter the competition just pop your name and email address in the box below. Also let me know who you are and why you’d like to take the course. Then: please share the contest on Twitter and/ or like the HappyPhD Facebook page and share the contest post. That's it! Click on the bird to tweet about the contest (or create your own tweet, just make sure you insert the hashtag #HappyPhD and my Twitter handle so I can find your [...]
On Holiday – Or: Strategies to Actually Unplug
Summer holidays. The academic year is done, the deadlines have been met, the plane tickets have been booked, the ‘out-of-office’ reply almost written. Cue: sunglasses, sunscreen, novels, countryside or city trips. And shutting that office door firmly behind you for a good couple of weeks. Except: How to close that office door firmly? What about work that still needs to be done? What about the incoming emails? There may be upcoming conferences, not too far ahead, that need abstracts and papers and presentations. There may be marking still to do. Or revisions of papers that you will now finally have the time to [...]
Overcoming Fear When Writing: Be Inspired
They say: "Feel the fear and do it anyway." I would add to that: "Let your inspiration carry you." One way of tuning into your inspiration is to be inspired by others. Who are the scholars you admire? Which papers are the ones you'd like to have written? Which argument is so compelling it makes you go: ah! Or, which papers annoy you to no end? You are looking for the emotional response here. And the intellectual challenge. Combined, they will lead to compelling work. Yours. Collect these papers and books, and voices and arguments, and tune into them before [...]
LIBRARY
Free Resources Library
I have compiled some free resources for you to download. An e-book, a short course with encouraging emails to nudge your writing productivity alive, and a worksheet with a mini-course to create an effective and very zen work routine.
Leave your email to get access.