phd advice

Worried about deadlines? Try this.

“Is there any point in having a deadline? I have tried so many times, but failed to meet them, so I stopped. Then again, I feel like I miss having a deadline as it may motivate me to focus more.” The short answer: deadlines are useful until they are not. The main use of deadlines is to set an end point. It helps focus the mind, it gives you a shot of adrenalin in the run-up to the set date which helps us get stuff done. It also allows you to draw a line: academic work is never finished so [...]

August 6th, 2018|
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Quitting your PhD doesn’t make you a quitter

About one in three PhDs decide not to finish their PhD. These decisions aren’t taken lightly. And sometimes they aren’t taken at all, and you might keep plodding along even though you have come to the conclusion you’d rather not, because there is tremendous pressure to finish. Once you have started you have to ‘keep going’, or so it seems. Because now it is ‘too late’ to stop. Quitting means failure. You didn’t ‘make it’, and everyone will judge you for it… it won’t look good. I have a question for you: what if quitting your PhD could be an [...]

July 9th, 2018|
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Six Steps to Create a Super Focused Workday

What if you could sit down at your computer every morning, click open your documents, and have your work simply flow? Maybe academic work can’t be quite that effortless, but there are simple things you can do to increase the odds of focus and flow happening. First point to note is that focus doesn’t happen spontaneously. It requires the right conditions. Ironically, academic culture with its insistence on working long (and even longer if you can!) linear days does not foster these conditions. Working past the point of diminishing returns is how our energy dwindles and focus is lost, and [...]

June 6th, 2018|
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Feeling stressed to the max? Five tips to help you cope

Academia has a terrible effort-reward balance. This matters. Research shows that we get super-stressed when effort and reward are out of balance. Day to day there are very few wins or encouragements, and feedback, as we know, centers on criticism. Useful, and necessary criticism (in the best case), but it doesn't exactly make you feel good. The rewards take an incredibly long time to manifest. We’re talking months or years before we have a new shiny publication… A friend of mine remarked: ‘and by that time you are so done with it you never want to lay eyes on the [...]

May 28th, 2018|
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The Stress-Free PhD Programme Giveaway!

It’s time for a giveaway! To celebrate the launch of the Stress-Free PhD Programme, I have two free spots up for grabs for the first round of the programme which starts June 11th. I am so excited this moment has finally come, I’ve been working on this for about a year, behind the scenes. Almost as slow as academic work!! But today’s the day, and the programme is finished and ready to go. I’m hoping to see fewer burnouts and PhD slumps, and more PhDs finished well within the time-frame (OK, Just In Time will also do!), and with more [...]

May 22nd, 2018|
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Six shifts to finish your PhD in a couple of hours a day

I am so excited my new website is finally ready! You won’t believe the work that went into creating it (There is an entirely new 6-week online programme I am very proud of. Check it out here…) One page that didn’t need much tweaking was the ‘My Story’ page, where I tell you all about how this blog, the online course and the coaching biz came into being. My personal tale is so interwoven with what I do now. The PhD is now so far away, yet so present day to day! I was taken aback when I re-read my [...]

May 14th, 2018|
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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.

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