The PhD Life Coach

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! We all know we should have time away from work yet so many of us don’t. It shocks me that people don’t get more curious about WHY intelligent, capable people don’t do things that we KNOW will help us. In this episode, I share why I think imposter syndrome has a massive impact on our ability to choose a better work life balance. A must i...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! We all talk about goal setting, and the importance of SMART goals, and yet most of us still set goals that don’t work. Maybe we get there in the end, often in unsustainable ways, or maybe we let the goal drift and then set it again with the promise “it’ll be different this time”. In this episode, I’m going to share 10 ways I think we ca...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! We often think of resilience as the ability to withstand more and more stress or pressure, which never sounds like a lot of fun or very sustainable. However, as Dr Sherry Hamby explains in this episode, that’s not really what the scientific literature says about resilience. We chat about Dr Hamby’s book, Stronger Than You Think, and go...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Trying to be “more independent” and “driving your PhD” when your supervisor simultaneously keeps rejecting your ideas can be one of the biggest challenges in academia. In this episode I talk about why I think this situation comes about, what impact it has, and give four tangible ways that you can improve the situation for both you and y...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! When did you last get some negative feedback? As PhD students and academics, we get negative feedback quite often, either comments on drafts of papers, rejections from journals, applying for jobs, all sorts of things. We get bits of negative feedback and it can really hurt. So what do we do when we experience negative feedback? What do...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Imposter syndrome often affects the most high achieving people yet it can still feel so true that you’re “not good enough” and “conning” other people into believing you’re better than you are. In this episode, I discuss a paradox that I see a lot in academics experiencing imposter syndrome - the tendency to simultaneously believe that y...

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 mana...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! It's so easy to believe that you don't have time for a life outside of academia. The pressure and the never-ending to-do lists mean that even having fun feels like one more thing you need to fit in. In this episode I talk about the benefits of having hobbies outside of academia, including how I found myself hanging by my ankle...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! One of the things I hear clients say most often is that they don't know what to do. They either don't know what decision to make in their life, they don't know how to do something, they don't know how to present their argument, how to structure their paper, they don't know which study to do, they don't know...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode, I talk about feeling behind! It's easy to spend a lot of time telling yourself that you're behind your own plan or you're behind other people. Neither feel good and neither help us make more progress.  I'll talk through why these sort of thoughts hold us back and give some ideas about what to do inst...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Procrastinating is when we scroll social media instead of working, right? No! Procrastination is anything that we do to avoid the emotions associated with doing the task we intend to do. In this episode, I will share eight things that I think are often used as procrastination and help you figure out what to do if you recognise yourself...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Pretty much every PhD student struggles with procrastination yet the advice is often very generic. In this episode, I talk about a theoretical framework that helps us better understand why each of us, as individuals, procrastinate so that we can make more tailored plans to support ourselves. I also explain why it’s totally understandabl...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode, I explain why chasing ‘perfect efficiency’ is actually making your PhD harder. Many students think that taking flawless notes or writing excellent first drafts will save time — but this mindset often leads to procrastination and stress. Instead, I reveal why starting imperfectly is the key to progress. Writing is part o...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! If you start your weeks strong but usually end disappointed, then this episode is for you! I’m going to be sharing how everything improved for me when I separated “boss me” from “implementer me” and used that idea to understand why I felt so frustrated at the end of the week. I’ll identify the most common issues so you can see which res...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode, I make a feisty case for why we should ban highlighters! I’ll give you four reasons they’re not helping you and tell you what you should be doing instead. Forward this to all your favourite stationery-obsessed friends!   If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on Ten lessons I learned about doing PhD...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Pretty much all PhD students have a vague (or very strong) sense that they’re not taking “good enough” notes. Yet for most of us, we’re not really clear what good enough notes would actually be like, and often have really unrealistic expectations about what function our notes should serve in the future. In this episode, I don’t give you...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Do you keep getting distracted when you’re writing? Settle down to actual draft something, then decide to just look something up, and then two hours later you’re still down the rabbit hole and nothing is written. If so, this episode is for you!  This has blown my clients minds many times. I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t read when you’re...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! One of the most common comments I hear from PhD students is that reading always takes longer than they expect. In this episode, I share four elements that you need to take into account when deciding how much time you are going to give an article, book or other piece of writing. By being more intentional in considering these elements, yo...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! One of the most frustrating moments in a PhD or academic career is reading through your first draft—only to realise it’s a mess. It doesn’t flow, the arguments feel clunky, and now you’re stuck figuring out how to fix it. In today’s episode, I’m sharing practical techniques to help you transform that rough first draft into a polished ma...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Writing can feel like you’re banging your head against a wall sometimes. Trying to craft sentences, when you’re not entirely sure where you’re going, and then spending hours working and ending up with nothing to show for it. In this episode I unpick the self-talk that makes this more painful than it needs to be, I introduce the concept...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode we think about our own inner dialogue. How do you speak to yourself? Are you critical? Quick to judgment? Pessimisitic? Put yourself under pressure? All of these things are so common in academia yet we never really get shown how to manage our minds. Instead we either indulge these thoughts (ie we believe them and look fo...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! There is no voice you hear more often than the voice inside your head, yet we often spend very little time thinking about HOW we speak to ourselves and the effect it has. When did you last call yourself useless? Lazy? Stupid? In this episode we think about how we can notice our negative self-talk and start to be our own best supervisor....

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! If you put off having difficult conversations or get frazzled just thinking about it, then you need to bookmark this episode! I am going to give you my three step process for preparing for a difficult meeting. You’ll learn how to manage your own worries, strategize for success, and leave feeling proud of yourself.   If you liked this ep...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode I discuss five ways that you can improve your relationship with your PhD supervisor. This relationship is one of the most important aspects of your research experience yet we so often leave it to chance. The good news is that you can improve things so much without expecting them to change at all - find out how in this ep...

Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! This is the second episode this week focused on community and relationships. Loneliness in academia is so common yet so rarely talked about. In this episode I’m going to get honest about some of my experiences of loneliness, share why I think academia can be a particularly lonely place, and give some tangible tips that you can use to ma...