The 12 Month Dissertation

In this weeks episode of Office Hours, Dr. Lacy talks about how to finish your dissertation in 12 months as seamlessly as possible without stressing yourself out during the process.

Transcript:

Introduction: 

Hey friend, the time has come to finish your dissertation, graduate and become doctor. Welcome to office hours with Dr. Lacy where we talk about how to finally master this time management thing so you can stay on top of it without losing your mind. Every Wednesday you can find a new episode wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure you hit the subscribe button to make sure you never miss an episode. I’m Dr. Marvette Lacy, your dissertation writing strategist here to be with you along every step of the way. I would like to thank you for coming to today’s office hours. Let’s get started on today’s episode. Hey, how’s writing going? I know you don’t like the question, but let me tell you, when you join the finish your dissertation program, you will love that question. Clients often report feeling excited and joyful to go into their process even before they even get to the dissertation process, and that’s what I’m inviting you to do. I’m inviting you to come inside the group and join us so that you can get the structure you need and the tools that will help you to show up consistent and disciplined in your process. All you need to do is come on over to Marvette lacy.com/apply and sign up for the wait list and you will be the first notified when doors are open. See you soon.

Dr. Lacy:

Okay. That is the wrong presentation. Okay. So we’re going to talk to them about what does the 12 month dissertation look like? Can you all see that? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um, so let me pull up the chat box so I can see what y’all are saying. All right. So first, you know, like to start off with a question, how has the dissertation and/or doctoral process been challenging? So you can feel free to put your responses in the chat, or you can unmute yourself and let us know. It doesn’t have to be anything perfect. It can be a one-word answer. I’m just curious to know what your experience has been like.

Participant: 

I can share. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Um, well I have a full-time job and managing what’s study mode. You know, when I go into study mode versus work mode has been very challenging for me. Um, especially when my job is very demanding and I finish my workday so tired. So finding the energy and trying to find the best time for me to study, I’m not naturally a morning person, but then I’m so tired after work that I am having to make myself a morning person to get this to work.

Dr. Lacy: 

So, yeah. Yeah. Um, I like think about those. Like, I’m just looking for one, just one F to give, I’m gonna try not to curse early in the morning. I’m like, that’s a warmup. Right. But I’m like, you know, you, like, not that you don’t care, like, not that you don’t want to finish, but in those days after you work a whole day, dealt with all the people and all the things, do you really want to sit down and like, write and try to think about that? It’s like, I don’t have energy. Can I just sit on the couch and do that? So I feel you thank you for sharing. Um, Ro says unnecessary processes that feel like hazing. It is hazing.

Participant: 

Yeah. And I, and I feel like, okay, so with my program and Bernard’s in this program too, but there was just a kind of like debt to the process. And then there’s all these unwritten rules kind of like you talked about yesterday, like unwritten ways that you’re supposed to move through space and unless somebody has hit you to the game, you don’t know how to maneuver spaces. So a lot of times it just feels the process feels hazing and then all of the things you’re expected to know, but don’t know also feel like hazing. Yeah. And I just, I think that, like I was like, nobody said anything about these.

Dr. Lacy: 

Um, when I was in the sec, I graduated from the same program and I was like, nobody said anything about these like orientations. We used to have to go away for those. And that costs additional money. And I’m like, I don’t even have money to live. And now I’m supposed to find money to go to these experiences and drive and buy all these extra things. Um, and just me, not even knowing that people were working with faculty on separate projects and research teams and like, is this posted somewhere? How would I even know these things? Um, and if you don’t right. Cause taking building relationships takes time with people and yeah, you can have a cohort, but like, I don’t know them they don’t know me. Right. Like who gon tell me. Right. And then, you know, you can get into this whole like some people get into the spirit of competition and being like, I can’t tell you about these opportunities because if I tell you then I won’t be able to have it. So yeah. Yeah. Chile just, it’s just a lot. It’s a lot. umm Alex said the interpersonal relationships with faculty have been pretty crappy. Hurt people, hurt people. Right. And they’re just, they think like faculty, some of them are like, well, I didn’t have it easy. So why should you have it easy? You should work. And it’s like, it just keeps being passed down, um, crazy at times. Yeah. I would love to know more if you are comfortable to share. Bernard says, Oh, go ahead.

Participant: 

Yes. Hi all. Um, I’m from Abu Dhabi at UAE. Um, today’s my first day joining. Um, thank you. Um, so the crazy at times, what I meant is, um, uh, at the beginning, I didn’t know how to organize my thoughts when writing. Um, and I find it challenging where to start first. So I started from the introduction which I shouldn’t have, um, then I, I sat with my advisor, then he guided me how to go about it. So I started from the methodology and then going back and forth and it took me longer. And I thought it was similar to masters, how you write your thesis. Um, but apparently it’s way different. You, you write and learn at the same time, especially, um, some, um, I’m at the stage of writing my analysis and realized I had to learn. So writing and learning at the same time, some new statistical analysis that I never knew before I had to learn it while writing. So it’s something, a PhD you’re, you’re writing and learning, going through it. So it’s quite, um, yeah, that’s the challenge for me.

Dr. Lacy: 

Yeah. We’re definitely going to talk about that more in a little bit. And I feel like people don’t tell you that they just make it seem like, Oh, you’re going to take courses for this amount of time. And then they make it seem like you should be all set to go to write this dissertation in 12 months. It’s like, Nope. Nope. Yeah. So thank you so much. And is it Nyeema, is that how you pronounce your name? Yes. Awesome. Awesome. Um, Elizabeth says challenging. It’s hard to juggle, like writing, work, family and me time has been hard and he, you know, the lie is, Oh, because we are in quarantine because of due to COVID that you should have more time to be able to do that. And you probably have seen that it’s even more challenging with like everyone being home all the time. Uh, it usually you’d say yes, I feel that, uh, can we, uh, being in a proposal stage during the dual pandemic just, uh, threw me, it was a struggle to grieve what could have been. Yes. and balance self care and all the things as the world kept moving evolving as I tried to get my legs underneath me. Right. It’s going back to the whole thing of like, Oh, you’re at home. It should be fine. No, we’re in a whole ass pandemic. I’m not fine. See, I try to not curse y’all, but that’s, I’m just being me. Um, writing and learning, yes loving, um, comments. Um, just exhaustion after each hurdle has worn me down. I mean, like it, then that’s the other lie, right? That you can power through. But sometimes, especially after that proposal. Cause I swear chapter two tried to take me out. I was like, I just need, I just need some breathing room. Um, and that’s totally fine. Totally fine. So thank y’all.

Here’s the next question? What does the ideal dissertation/ doctoral process look like in your mind? Nice. I’m writing in isolation as much as it’s nice to be alone. It’s not be around folks of color scholars of color. yeah your mind started playing tricks on me. And I’m about to age myself. Cause I just immediately thought about that song. Who was the girl Khalia, you know, I know, you know, [inaudible] sorry. See, I do realize, um, Oh yeah. I used to, me and my father were listed at all the time in the car and I needed to, no matter where we’re going, no matter what the trip was, you need to play it so I can rap and I can just show you my bars. But anyway, again, too young to be listening to such songs. Um, yeah. So what did y’all think that or what do you think that the process should look like? With structure fast and minimal errors. Oh yeah. I get it. Step by step guide on how to do it with supportive and available chair and advisor. Ooh. If I only Paula. If Only. Anyone else? Non-judgmental listen. It’s like, don’t judge me on, how am I supposed to know? I don’t know. Linear producing something each month. 

It should be a beautiful experience, filled with intellectual growth and self-Discovery. Yes Elizabeth that’s so beautiful. Shazna:. my advisors have abandoned me now. Um, advisor support is really important. Yeah. And I think like, as we started to go into, um, self isolation, like March and April, I felt like you really saw that happened, um, with advisors and chairs of like, where did you go? You disappeared. Um, and that was, to me, it was a reminder of like, I mean, I know everyone’s human, right. But like they were also trying to figure out things, but you’re like, I still have things that I’m trying to push forward. And I know that we’re all trying to figure this out, but like you were not available before this thing happened and you’re definitely not available now. Right. Um, yes. Anyone else? Access to monies Yes. But enough to be able to support ourselves and our dependent so we can actually do the work. Yeah. All this is like on the backs of graduate students, higher education. Um, and the compensation is not there. Right Bernard but they still like, so, but wait, when are you going to do things? We like girl, you like I ain’t heard from you what my father says a month from Sundays and now you asking me when I’m gonna have something done. Yes. Thank y’all. Feel free to keep sharing.

Um, and then as this, this final question is who do you need to be in order to get closer to that ideal version? Disciplined. Consistent. Why is consistency so challenging at times? For me, I’m like, I get bored. I’m like, I don’t want to do the same thing over and over. Let’s do something new. Going back to our conversation yesterday. A morning person, grace-oriented and self-compassionate and intentional. Yes. And it’s like but who, where, how Imma find the time to do all these things? Um, so focused on my goals now. I can’t see the rest. Um, in spite of all the BS. Yes. Feel self-compassionate laser-focus yeah. Productive. Thank you. I’ll keep, keep br them in, not a perfectionist open, vulnerable forgiving, of myself. Yeah. So that is really important Bernard. Right. And sometimes we can find that difficult, especially when you feel like I’m just out here by myself and I’m just trying to figure this out on my own. Okay. Compassionate with myself.

Okay. So Let me say this. I’m going to go into this conversation and I will talk about how you can outline your dissertation in 12 months. And I’m doing this because you know, there are some real, like reasons why you would want to do it. I want you to take this to, with, I’m going to give you the structure. But There is no pressure to finish it in a certain amount of time, unless you like, no, there is girl, I have to right? Thinking about my email from my chair, where she was like, you got, you got, what was it Four months. You got four months to get it done. Right. So if you want to do this, you can. And realizing that life still happens while you’re doing this process. And so if things are not going in as linear way or in the timeline that you have set for yourself, it’s all right. Because when you always think about 10 years from now, when I look back on this moment, how like much will I think about if it took me an extra month or even if it took me an extra year or two, like, or even more than that? Will I look back and be like, Like, man, I could’ve done, Like I should have done it faster. Or will I be happy that I did it and I finished it. And I was able to move on. Yeah. And really allowing yourself to go to that place 10 years from now, not thinking about it from where you are now, but going to that place 10 years from now being like, is this really a big Deal or will I be proud of myself cause I finished this.

So I wanted to say it with that caveat, And I want to you know, talk about that, you can do it. It’s more of a question and asking yourself and cause like considering should you, would it be in your best Um, what’s the word, would it be at your best? What is the word I’m looking for? Interest! Yes. Would it be in your best interest? Right. So the dissertation process, you know? Yeah. Thank you Bernard. Come on. Um, yeah, I was just, I’m just gonna know I got the PhD and I haven’t spent any time to cuddle with my other degrees. This is such a good reminder. Yes. Um, so the process, right? Cause people just focus on it. You need to write the dissertation, but it’s like, what am I supposed to put in that thing? How am I supposed to structure the thin. How I’m supposed to plan each part out. Right. Like when am I supposed to do what, um, how do I present the dissertation? Like how do I talk about it? Like how do I prepare for the defenses, right. And how do I have the energy and motivation to do all these things right. By only focusing on the writing part, we, we lose all these other parts. And that’s what I’m thinking in terms of programs and you know, advisors and chairs and whatnot forgetting to all of this as involved in this process.

Scholar Framework: 

So in, um, the finish your dissertation program, we use, we organize everything around the scholar framework and this framework is a five point, um, framework, starting with commitment, courage, consistency, care, and celebration. And I’m going to go through each of these. I will be giving you these slides so that sure take notes, but don’t feel like you have to write down everything because there is going to be a lot of information in these slides. And I think it’s more important to just be here and allow yourself to just be present more than just trying to get down every word.

So commitment right. We talked about yesterday going through the river of misery, right? Like, and if you go embark on this journey to becoming a doctor, you have to go through the river of misery and the river of misery means you are who you are right now. And your future self is doctor. You there’s a set of processes and failures along the way. Yeah. So those of you who are not here yesterday, we talked about, you have to fail your way to becoming doctor. It sounds kind of contradictory. And it’s the reality of life. Failures. It’s not a good or a bad thing. It’s just something that gives us information for the next step of the journey. So when you’re on this side of things, right, you have to make a plan and you first have to commit that I’m going to intentionally go into this river of misery, knowing that it’s going to be filled with, you know, uh, a road of failures. Right? And so the first way that we commit into getting into this river is outlining what this timeline could even be. Right. And remember, We also talked about yesterday that a plan is just a plan to give you directions. But there, there going to be some things, some turns, some rerouting that has to happen, but first let’s just even lay out what could that timeline look like and what you want to do because life is happening is revisit that timeline every month.

12 Month Timeline:

So what I suggest in terms of a timeline, right? We talked about this earlier. I also suggest starting with chapter three, people will tell you to start with the introduction or start the literature review. But if you don’t know what it is that you’re doing, if you don’t know even like what the project is, right. Chapter three is all about methodology, depending on your program structure. If you don’t have a, a view overall view, how can you really know what literature you should be reading or even how to write the overview of your project? Right? Which is chapter one. So I suggest, um, we work towards, uh, completing a chapter a month to give you a sense. Um, but then month one, we start with chapter three, right? Getting very clear of what are you going to do and how are you going to do it? Right? Cause a lot of people come to the process and can about, Ooh, I want to try this method. I want to get data in this way. And that’s circulating through your mind as you’re trying to write chapters one and two, and that’s getting in the way you can’t focus on that. So start just, let’s just do it now, chapter three and then month 2 we will move to chapter two. And if you were here yesterday, I talk about how, like I spent so much time when I was doing my, um, what is called a publishable paper in my program. I spent so much time on the literature review that I didn’t pay attention to methodology or anything else. The same thing I see with students is focusing so much on chapter two and chapter two is never really meant for you to just write it one time and be done because you’re going to have to come back to it based on the data that you collect and how you make sense of that data.

You’re going to have to connect it back to the literature and you don’t know what you don’t know. So yeah, you start with a base for chapter two, but when you do the data collection and analysis part, you’re going to come back and change it. So it’s going to change. So we don’t need to put all of our time and energy and attention into chapter two, which is going to do a good solid plan, give an overview of justification of the project and then we’re going to move on. And then chapter one, and I look at month three, because chapter one doesn’t really take that long to finish. Especially once you have already completed chapters three and two, you can really sit down and do chapter one in a matter of a few hours because you already had that information and it becomes like a plug and play situation.

Right? And so if it’s only gonna take you a few hours, you might be like, but why a whole month? Because right. Paula talked about needing that like that time, that rest time after chapters three and two, because again, chapter two tried to take me out and I just needed a moment to like, I just need to breathe. You may need to breathe. I don’t know. It might not be chapter two for you. Maybe it’s chapter three, but at least it gives you some breathing room in month three to work on those things. Um, and you know, timelines again, they’re guidelines, life happens. So it gives you some space. Month 4 working on some edits going back and forth, getting feedback from your chair, scheduling defense, you know, doing all those things. That takes time too, because faculty, right. We talked about like, where, where are you? You gotta, like, you gotta track them down. You gotta be like, please give me a day in time that works. And um, I think sometimes we don’t allow for that and that things change, right? Um, again, breathing room month five, you do your defense and you work on IRB. Cause that’s a whole process in itself while it’s not difficult. Or in terms of like thinking, it can be a very tedious process and all the little things that you have to give to IRB, which is the institutional review board. For those of you who do not have at your institution, it’s where you submit your project. And um, pretty much the university wants to make sure they’re not going to get sued. And so that’s what they’re doing, right? And then month six, which has a typo, you engage in data collection.

I Suggest that even through months, four or five, that you start to think about, are there potential people to actually reach out to, are there people, um, in terms of reaching out to like, to either be a participant or who can help you gain access to whatever your research site is, you can start joining some of those things as well. And you can start planning. It’s like, yes, you can’t collect data necessarily before IRB comes back to approve it. But you can do some more of those administrative things Ahead of time,

Month seven, do some data collection and analysis. These things go hand in hand, particularly if you’re doing qualitative research because as you are collecting data, you’re you are the research instrument, right? And so you’re going to be naturally making connections. And so analysis is going to begin as you start collecting data. So that’s why I put those two things together. Um, continue doing some data analysis in month eight. Month nine you work on your findings. Um, I’m going to say that the findings and discussions I’m like, like the rest of this is simple. What happens particularly in the findings section, um, Elizabeth, as a warning, cause I know you’re going here is that you have so much to say you have so much data that you want to tell and you’re trying to figure out how to format it. All. What I will say about your findings is it’s not intended for you to include all of your data. That’s why people continue to publish from their dissertation data for months and years afterwards, because there’s going to be so much richness there. Um, the goal here in month 9 is to really be clear about what is it that I want to say for the purposes of this dissertation, everything else I will continue to write about it Later. Month 10 is discussion, now month 10 chapter five, you’re tired. And you’re like, I’m over this. I don’t want to do this anymore. You can have the whole thing. You could have a dissertation, you could have the degree. I don’t even need it. And so that’s why this month is challenging is because you’re, it’s like, you’re coming to the end. Like yeah, you see the finish line, but you like, I mean, I don’t even know if it’s worth it anymore.

And so a lot more of mindset and support is needed. And once you get that, like you can also do this in a matter of days too, because this is when you become doctor and you tell the people what they should do with the data like this is what y’all need to do next. Month 11 Edits, feedback, scheduling a defense, preparing your minds, you know, planning out your graduation party, planning out the celebration, writing acknowledgements right. Then month 12 you defend, you edit and you submit it to the graduate school. Sounds simple. Right. Um, okay. I’m missing a slide. Maybe I’m missing a slide. Yeah. I’m missing a slide.

Every Month: 

Um, Oh no, I’m not. Okay. I’m back. So every month, here’s what you want to do. You want to, now that you have your timeline, you want to say, okay, what is it that I’m working on for the month? So we do this in the program every month. We, so tomorrow is the first Sunday. We’ll be asking everyone, what is your commitment for the month? What do you commit doing for this month? No matter what happens, I’m getting this one thing done. And you want to state why that it’s important for you to complete that one thing for the month.

And yes we’re only doing one thing because we also try to do too much in one month. So when you have one focused goal is very clear. All of your actions and planning should be going towards that one goal and getting that done. You want to identify the potential barriers and distractions that will come up. Now, if they come up, they will come up. Right? So, you know, you got that one friend or family member who always gonna call you with some drama. You got, you know, your grandma who’s like baby I need you to take me to the store. You know, that’s coming up. You know, like your kids, you gonna try to write, they gonna come in and ask you 50 11 questions that they didn’t have one question all day, but you sat down to write. And now they got all the questions. Now they want a snack. They want all the things, right? So what are those barriers and distractions and then plan for it. Make a plan. What will you do when those things come up? You want to do this ahead of time. Because if you try to do it in the moment right Tati you like talking about after work. And you’re trying to figure out like, maybe you had to stay at work later. That’s not the time to try to figure out what to do. Cause you’re tired and you’re irritated.

So here’s an example. Let’s just say for August, my goal is to complete data collection and that’s important to me because I want to spend additional time analyzing and finishing the dissertation by December. Let’s just say, that’s my goal. Potential barriers that may come up. We’re going into a new semester. I’m having to TA for a class. Right? My daughter’s birthday is coming. I want to plan that out. And then just covid planning. Maybe you’re on a committee for your job. And that might take some extra, um, responsibilities that are coming up. And so what are your plans? You can plan for each individual thing happening. Or you can say something like, no matter what happens every week, I plan to show up to my writing group. Even if it is for like a five minute, just to say, Hey, y’all, I’m here. Here’s what I got going on this week.

I can’t stay, but I wanted to do the check-in and this may seem like, Oh, that’s not enough, but it is. Make it simple because showing up, right. I’m sure you heard like showing up is half of the battle, right? Just show up because what you’re doing is creating a habit for yourself to say, this is important to me and you’re telling your brain, right? We’ve been talking a lot about mindset, right? You’re telling your brain that this is important. And I’m showing up to do these things. Even if it is for five minutes, that’s fine. I need you to know brain that this is important. Um, and then you tell yourself, like you’re showing up for yourself. And another thing I think about is you keep your dissertation top of mind, you keep that reminder there that this is important for you, um, and your subconscious is very powerful. 

So when we do things over and over and over, you’re right, we talked about the lizard brain, your lizard brain kicks in and like, Oh, well they keep doing this. So clearly we just might as well just put this on autopilot. And then it becomes a part of who you are and just what you do that you show up for your writing groups. You show up for your dissertation. So your turn, I’m gonna give you a few minutes and it doesn’t have to be perfect. And I’m sure you will continue to work on this even after today, but I’m give you a few minutes to just think about sketch out. What could the next 12 months look like in terms of your timeline, decide what your one thing is going to be for August. Identify some potential barriers and distractions and jot down some things of what you can do to plan for when those things happen. So play a song and come back and just know that you will have to work on this probably some more when you have some more time, You know, taking song suggestions too, Trying to find something without a lot of swear words.

Checklist: 

So I’m gonna, I know you’re still working. Again I’ll send this, but if you want to a screenshot, you can go ahead and do that. Now we’re going to go to the next, um, the next point. Okay. All right. So then, um, we’re going to go into courage, right? So once we set a commitment, once you tell your brain that I’m going to do this goal, your brain instantly freaks out, right? We talked about yesterday being like your brain doesn’t know the difference between a new goal, like the dissertation and a mountain lion coming somewhere to get you. It’s the same thing. Your brain is convinced you are going to die. Why are you trying to do something new? And so it will throw up all of the reasons why this is not a good idea. Why this is not going to work yet? Yeah that looks good, but it’s not, You can’t do that. And so you need to practice courage to continue to go through the river of misery. And so courage, um, looks like this, like having the courage to, um, participate in a weekly writing group, with structure we talked about this a little bit yesterday, um, courage to plan out your week, every week and reflect on what’s working for you, establishing a writing schedule. We talked about this yesterday as well and finding and establishing accountability group, which could be the same as your writing group or not.

Writing Group: 

So the writing group: meet every week. This is important. Um, cause you may like may think like I can’t write something every week. You can right. We’re establishing habits. So you want to show up on a weekly basis. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Um, I know like Alex is a part of a group. I think y’all what meet on Fridays. Right? It’s just, it can be on zoom. They don’t have to be, especially now, you don’t have to be in person. Right. And you want to spend some time checking in with one another, but because I forgot who said it earlier, but this can be a very isolating process and you need people, so you don’t have to go straight into work. Oh. Its every other Friday. Okay. Um, you don’t have to go straight into work. You just check in with each other. How are you like for real? How are you, how is life? Just someone asking you and genuinely meaning, uh, mean it. Cause I know we, we get into the habit of being like, how are you? And you’re like, Oh, I’m good. And then we move on. No, are you good? Tell me. Right. So checking in with each other, remember we are humans talk to each other as humans. Um, and then you want to have some way of, I think identifying what the goals or the goal is for that day, for that writing session and speaking that out loud, right? Paula talked about the importance of speaking, speaking, what we want to do and our intentions and our desires out loud. Right? Um, you can structure it in a way that the goal is you show up with a piece of writing to be reviewed by each other, in that writing group.

Right? In a piece of writing, I literally mean a piece of writing. It could be a sentence. I mean a sentence. It could be a sentence. It could be a paragraph. And I had to find a paragraph is 4 shitty sentences. They don’t even have to go with one another. They could just be 4 sentences on a page and be like, I showed up with something. Here you go and review it. Right? Cause not only right, we’re setting up habits, you’re showing up, you’re talking with people and you’re, you’re um, establishing the habit of writing something and giving it to someone to review and getting that feedback and getting used to that because a lot of us are scared to get feedback and then look at the feedback. And this helps you to build up that muscle if you will. Review each other’s writing. Right. And you discuss the writing, right? Because this also helps you in processing your ideas. And um, like I know I wrote this, but this is what I was thinking. And then you get feedback from other people. That connection is so powerful.

Um, and then you want to use whatever remaining writing time to address whatever edits that they provided for you or whomever else you sent it off to addressing those edits. And then you, before you leave, set the intentions of what, what you’re going to do for the next week, like, what are your goals? What are you going to be working on? So that is a structure that you could use for your writing group or finding some sort of structure. Um, that works for whomever you’re in the group with. It is, it is key to have structure in a writing group because I know y’all have gone to some writing groups and it’s been like, this is just writing time and nobody’s writing, right?

Like you’re talking about it yesterday of like, you spend more time catching up, but gossiping or talking about shows or maybe people, other people are writing in the group, but you’re like scrolling on Facebook or Instagram. Cause you’re just not, you don’t feel like it you’re tired, but when you have structure, it’s like, okay, Oh, this is what we’re doing. This is the part when we do this and it helps you to keep moving forward.

Weekly Planning & Reflection: 

Um, you want to engage in a weekly planning and reflection process. So tomorrow, um, at the end of the day, we’re going to walk you through the scholar planning routine, um, that to get us started in this conversation and prepare you as you’re looking at your monthly commitment and at the, at the minimum, what you want to do is identify 15 tasks that you can complete not every week, but for the next seven days, what are 15 things that you can do that will get you closer to completing that monthly commitment, right?

And you want to think about these tasks as very small things. When I say small things like, Oh, I can reach one task, could be, I can reach out to the reference librarian for my content area and schedule a meeting. I could go pick up those books that I have on reserve. I could read these three articles. I could watch this video on how to do narrative inquiry, right? Like think about very clear, detailed, small tasks that you can do. And the goal is only to do 15 of those a week. Looking at your brain will tell you, I need to do more than that. No, you don’t. We’re going to focus on these 15, cause this is how right progress happens. It’s very manageable. You don’t get stuck in overwhelm and confusion because it’s very clear what it is that you need to do. But we will definitely be walking you through how to get clear in terms of writing your tasks. Once you have them, you want to schedule them on your calendar.

And I’ll talk about this with the writing schedule. Like literally say my writing time Monday at three, I’m going to work on these three things. Because again, like Tati said like you, you go through a whole day and you have writing time at the end of that, your brain does not have energy to figure out what it is that you need to do during that writing time. So when you do this ahead of time, it takes that guesswork out and you are less likely to experience decision fatigue. It’s a real thing. Your brain only has a certain amount of decisions it’s going to make on the day before it shuts down on, you just takes, um, some of that worry off at the end of the week, you want to reflect on what worked for you and what you want to change for the following week. And you keep repeating this process.

Weekly Schedule: 

So your weekly schedule, I encourage you to have a 10 hour, but I’ll, I’ll give you a wiggle room of five hours. So 10 to 15 hours a week that you put on your calendar calendar its non-negotiable. Right? You work no more than four hours at a time. If you are doing four hour sessions, this should be like, uh, I think it should be a rare thing that you do during the week. Again, your brain only has so much time that it’s going to sit there and after four hours, I just feel like you’re just tired and you’re forcing yourself to do something that you just don’t have the energy or the capacity to really do. If you were honest with yourself. Now I understand that there are times where you’re like, but I have this deadline. So like Margaret, right? Like this may be a like crunch time of I’m just going to edit these pages and give it. That’s fine. But that’s not something you’re doing on an everyday basis.

Right. Identify How you will spend the time during your week and planning. So going back to those 15 tasks, now that you have your 10 to 15 hours, you put those tasks in your calendar. Sometimes I just put it as the title um in my Google calendar to say like, I’m working on these things and then identify how you will keep yourself accountable to your weekly schedule. So are you going to utilize your, um, writing group, other people? We’ll talk a little bit more about, um, accountability In a minute. Yes. The brain Will shut down. Yes. It will shut down. Bernard will be sitting there like, and how I know that my brain is shutting down is because I’ve been on Instagram for an hour when it was supposed to be like a 10 minute break and I’m like, girl, just get up and just go do something else. You’re doing the most.

Accountability Groups: 

So we talked about writing groups and I want to talk about accountability. And I separated these things out because they may not be the same people. Right. But they can be, but they may not be, I would say find, find Two or three people and assign them a job. People want to help you. They want to help you. They want to be a part of your journey. They want your goal just as much as you do, right? Like, think about family, especially like they are rooting for you, but people don’t always know how to help you.

And especially if you’re like me and I’m like, I don’t need help. I could do it by myself. And, and I don’t. I’m like, I don’t even know how to tell you to help me. It’s just so much going on. People want to help you, let them help you. Right. So you don’t have a person. You can have a person to text you before and after your writing time, you’re just like, listen, I’m supposed to be writing Tuesdays from 9 to 12. What I need you to do is text me before to just so I can check in and say, yep, I’m at the location. I said I was going to be at and I’m writing and then text me at 12 and asked me, how did it go? That’s something really simple someone could do for you. And that’s just a mental, like accountability for you, right? Because we can easily like lie to ourselves and be like, yeah, I’m do it. I’mma do it. And then you don’t do it. You end up watching, like, I dunno, TV, you don’t do it. But when you know someone’s going to text you, you like, man, I feel, I need to say something. I got to have something to say, cause I’m not gonna want to say that I didn’t do nothing.

And person two they can be your person. You send writing to for like APA formatting or minor copy editing. This is just an example. Right. You know, we all got that friend. Who’s like, I just love like Margaret. I just love reading People’s writing and editing. She’s like sure I’ll do it for you or that friend who’s an English major or something and just loves it. That’s just your person. You send that to, they don’t have to know your content. They just need to help you with formatting and minor things. Like are things spelled correctly, are the commas in the right places, right? Um, person three can be the person who knows your content. Like they know the research, they do similar research, they have similar literature as you, and you can give this person your writing, like, is there any people I’m missing? Any literature you think I should add or anything that should consider, right? Because they don’t have to worry about formatting and editing. They can just focus on the content that you have. Right. That’s a very clear job that you’re asking them to do. Person four can be your, um, I added this as a bonus too, because I think sometimes we don’t think about having accountability for how we care for ourselves. Right. So is there someone, um, like, you know, your cousin, like, uh, who wants to help you, that they can check in with you to see, how did you care for yourself this week? And knowing that you have that call and you know that you’re going to have someone who’s checking in with you. That’s their only thing they’re going to be focusing on is powerful. So, you know, you may need some other things that you want someone to check in with.

This is just to show you that people, they want to help. But when you send something like you’re writing off and like, can you look at this? We don’t know what that means. What am I looking for? Or can you help me with this? But like, how can I help you when you give people very clear things like, this is how you can help me. Like, if you are about to go in like Bernard thinking about you, you’re about to go into prelims. Right? Those four days that’s that’s listen, I’ll at the end of that. I was like look I can’t, I can’t do anything for myself. Um, right. So you can ask someone like for day one, you are in charge of making sure I eat lunch. I always, I had someone who was like, their job was to make sure I ate every day. Right. Um, telling them your mama, like, can you, can you call me and make sure I took a shower? Cause that’s important, but I’m not going to F I’m not going to feel like it. And so if you could just call and make sure I did that, that would be great. Right? Very clear. Um, asked my auntie to check in on Fridays yes Ro. Khalia. This is so helpful. Instructive. I struggle with this for a long time. Not understanding the how in terms of asking for help and support. Yeah, me either. I’m just like, I just know I need help. And I feel like I’m drowning and I don’t know how to tell anybody to help me.

So Here’s your turn. Identify three to five people that, uh, you can establish a writing group with, or maybe you already have it. And so you can list that there. And two to three people who you trust. Trust is important because when they tell you something that you don’t like, you can lean on that trust and know that they’re doing it because they have your best interest at heart. So who are two, three people you can trust to hold you accountable. Ro has her aunt that she is going to ask. I would just say, jot down some names. Old friend from high school. Yes. Put the people to work. They’re happy. Cause one thing to think about, like, we give so much to other people in our lives. They want to be able to give just a piece of that back if they can. And I know I used to think about like, hmm mm see, I tried that before. I tried asking people for help before and they never show up. We have to, you know, be open that not everyone is like that. Especially when you’re giving them very clear things to do. Friends and colleagues who are already doctors. Yes. Cause they know, they know firsthand what it’s like when they care about you.

Checklist:

Okay. So we talked about commitment. We talked about courage. You said this earlier, consistency is key. Getting across that river. You just gotta be consistent and good enough. And trying it again, keep like getting up and keep going. So number one is do the work. I feel like I had to state this like, cause again y’all know me and my story about all my planners. I was good at planning things following said plan, well, that was the whole other thing. Right? So do the work. Daily mindset work because I’m hoping by now and day two that you, you, you are clear that mindset is everything right. Doing some sort of monthly development, like monthly personal development, like Elizabeth talked about, you know, just living her best life. I mentioned when I was reading your sentence, like you were at home, just drinking a great drink.

Kids not bothering you, doing some monthly development. Research development means, um, spending time. Right Uh, I forgot who said it, but like this process is about learning and writing at the same time, making, making some time for that. Um, having a communication plan with your chair or your advisor, having a plan because we also talked about that. We need a plan, um, and engaging in consistent writing feedback. A lot of times people tell you like, this is your process, but they don’t tell you how to steer the process. That’s where that communication plan is coming in at. Um, I have all the stickers and to do lists, listen, I had to give, um, when I graduated, uh, my sister-in-law, she had just started getting into the planning world and I was like, I don’t need these stickers anymore. Cause I don’t use them anymore.

And I gave her this huge box of stuff and I was like, because otherwise it’s just going to go to somewhere somewhere else, someone I don’t know. And so you can use it, but I had all the stickers. Um, I love a planner, but don’t even look at it. I know I spent all day just decorating. What’s the, what’s the plan? Um, I was saying, so I got the calendar that has affirmation. Ooh, is this like an app or something Bernard? Come on. And if y’all like follow Ro, cause I think you put that on Instagram and her plan every week says from the desk of Roshaunda Breeden, I’m like, yes, yes. I love it. I feel just official looking at it. I have two dissertation journals too in case I had an epiphany. Yes. You know, the journals are important. Don’t get me started. I still that’s my one thing that I think will ever go away: Me journals and notebooks. I love it. Okay. So do the work. Practice daily courage and follow your plan. Excuse me, trusting your plan is key because when you made the plan, you were not in the middle of it. You were not tired. Hopefully like you weren’t in the middle of whatever the day is. So in those moments, when it comes down to do your work, like you’ve had a whole day of classes and work and you’re like, I don’t feel like it I’m going to change the plan. Don’t do that. Trust it. Cause you made it when you were not in a highly activated state, you made it when you were thinking clearly and rationally, just follow the plan and just take it one step at a time. That is what like showing up to do the work is. Like I had to repeat that to myself out loud throughout the week. Uh, just take it one step. Do the plan if plans says that, just do that because I, you know, I’m always like, Ooh, but I could do it this way. Or maybe there’s another way to do it. Let me go to Google. And I have to actively say, Nope, your plan says, do this, do this

Daily Mindset Work: 

Daily Mindset work. Right. It talked about this yesterday too. But it’s just simple as what I do every morning is I like now I’m to the point where I have a playlist, but I used to just set my phone for 20 minutes and I would spend maybe like five to 10 minutes just listing out o4ut of all of my thoughts as they were coming to me. Like all of them, like I don’t, I don’t want to be up. Why is it so early? Why does this dog want me to take him out? I’m hungry. Maybe I should have tacos tonight. And then as you allow yourself to do that, right, you become aware of what’s on repeat in your brain. Right? Cause we talked about like you had like 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day. Most of them are on repeat, but we don’t know what those thoughts are because we’re not aware of those thoughts when you do this practice every day at first, let me, okay.

Let me warn you. When you first started doing this, it is going to be like going to that, that, that closet or that, that place where you put all the junk or the random stuff, it’s going to be like opening it up and seeing like, ah, all of this, but it’s going to be okay because it’s going to, it’s going to level out. Um, and it won’t be as jarring, but just, we’re not going to run away from, it’s going to be like, yes, I’m facing my stuff. It’s good. We’re good. And so then you’re going to select one of those thoughts every day. And we talked about the model yesterday, but you’re going to do a model for the current state that you’re in and a model for where you would like to be. Um, so an example could be like, say you wrote down, like, I just don’t feel like writing today. When you think, I don’t feel like writing today, writing down How do you feel when you say that? And when you feel that way, what do you do? And when you do these things, what happens? You want to write that out? That’s what the model is. And then you can say, but I could think this instead. I could just say, I’m willing to take it one step at a time and finish that model. Um, for those of you who are not here yesterday, the recording will be, I’m trying to get this recording up at least by Monday or Tuesday so that you can review that information.

Monthly Development: 

Monthly development. So attend to your mind in a group setting, right. This could be like workshops, webinars, especially in these times here of COVID excuse the loud. You know, everybody got a souped up car and I’m just, I can’t wait to move y’all I am on the countdown. Um, but you know, in these times, like everybody’s like, there’s so many like workshops and webinars happening. Maybe you could read or listen to a book, watch a video on YouTube, but you want something that helps you attend to your mind every month. So do you keep this mindset work going so you can keep yourself, um, highly engaged and in tune to your body, right? Maybe you want to do something since we did like inner child work, maybe go find a video on that, but it’s okay to take time to attend to yourself because this dissertation will happen when you take care of yourself. You don’t, it don’t have to be this process that you just put your whole life and your whole like wellbeing on hold for this dissertation. It’s something that can be fit, um, that can fit within your life and then be in community with your future self, your ancestors and your spiritual guidance.

Right Niah talked about that in every moment we are always with our past self, our present self and our future self. What I like to do in terms of being in a community with my future self is, I say, so like an example for you would be what would my, myself who has finished, who has graduated like the future doctor me, what would they tell me in this moment? What advice would they give me in this moment? What do they look like? Like what did they eat today? What are they thinking about today? Who are they in community with? Because when you can allow yourself to imagine what your future self is doing, it gives you clues and very clear steps of what you can do in this moment to practice being that person. Right? Cause we have to practice being that person in order to become that person.

If you know, you believe in like spending time with your ancestors, spend time with them. What I like to do as being like, what did they have to deal with? Like, what was life like for Mary Early Francis who was the first, um, Black student, Black woman to, um, a doctoral student who graduated. And now the college of education is named after her. Like, what does she have to go through when she was walking these hallways? Like when, who does she like, have like, what BS did she have to put up with? What did she, um, how does she get through it and mean accessing that and spending time with her and being grateful to her within also give me clues on what to do in this moment and whatever your spiritual guidance is, right? Because we can only take ourselves so far. We have to believe in something bigger than us when things just seem like, Oh, this is BS. I don’t even know what to do. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I’m lean on the faith and my spiritual guidance to keep that’s going to leave me there and get me there.

Research Development:

So research development, revisiting your course materials, wherever part you are in, in your journey. So if you are working on methodology, going back to your method courses and reviewing those readings or your writings or your notes, just to refresh your mind. Because just because you went through that course doesn’t mean like you understood it and it’s gonna hit you differently at this point because you have more information. There’s a lot of webinars or workshops to go deeper. And like the content, the research, the writing skills, the writing. How do you even write academically? Right. And discuss this within your writing and or your accountability group.

Chair/advisor communication:

Chair/advisor communication. No more ghosting your chair. We’re not ghosting them. We will steer the ship. Okay. We plan a meeting with them at least once a month. I suggest a little cute 30 minute meeting, even if you like, but I’ll have nothing to say to them. Again, we are establishing habits. And a lot of this process what people won’t tell you is that your chair, your committee, they’re taking their cue from you. So how you show up, it’s going to determine what they think in terms of like, about the process. Now we can’t control anybody’s thoughts, but we can like influence, right? And so you want to send the message of like, like not only just giving lip service to it, but demonstrate like, this is important to me. This is, I am treating this like a job. And now I’m going to need you to meet with me once a month, whether that’s on the phone, on the zoom. If we need to take a social distance walk? You are meeting with me once a month. In that meeting and before that meeting happens, what you want to do is send out an email your going to say, Hey, so, and so I would to have a meeting with you, please see the agenda attached below to keep us on track that’s, sending a message like, Nope, I got this right. And not to say like, you don’t need them, but when you show up with that energy, people are like, Oh, Oh, okay. You’re making it very clear what it is that you want to talk about and what you need from them and what you’re asking of them. So you want to establish expectations. This goes both ways, right? I’m sure they have some expectations of you. And if they don’t, you can help them. Like, it’s kind of like managing up.

You can help them get some expectations or expectations that you want to, uh, discuss. Cause you also can have expectations of them. It’s fine their people. You can have expectations of them of like, when could I expect, like if I give you some writing, how long can I expect to receive that Writing back? What type of person are you in terms of feedback? Are you someone who’s going to just, you’re looking to see if I’m just progressing further. Are you someone who’s going, who’s doing a stream of consciousness. Are you someone who, um, like you only care about this one section, like asking them very pointed questions because you don’t need no surprises. When you go to open up your document after you gave them feedback, asking them, how do they prefer meetings? Do they prefer virtually? Not like, my expectation is that we’re going to meet once a month, but do you want a more frequent meeting time?

Right. Um, asking them, what type of documents do they prefer to receive? Like do they want it to be perfect when you give it to them? Or are they someone who likes to see it more in real time? Right? Or are they like somewhere in the middle? Cause that’s seems to be a lot of people. Um, you want to make it clear in your agenda or even in your email, like this is what I’ve been working on. I want you to know where my progress has been. Like for the past month, here are things I’ve been doing. This is what I’ve got done. Here’s what’s still in progress. Here are things that are coming up for the future. Right. And then clearly identify questions that you have for them. And yes so you want to give this to them ahead of time, right? For the friends who need some time to think. But when you show up to that meeting, that’s what you should be addressing these questions. I have, I don’t have times to hear. Now you might like your chain. You might want to spend time with them. But I feel like it’s 30 minutes. I got these questions. I need you to answer. And you had time to prepare. So we shouldn’t, you shouldn’t be need to be like, let me go look up this, let me go find this. Let me. I gave it to you ahead of time and then ask them for examples of dissertations and other writings so that this is for you to get a sense of what they are looking for. Because all the time, like people can’t always tell you what it is that they like or what they need. They just expect that you should know it. No fam you are a whole person. I don’t know what you want, but sometimes if you can ask them for like, um, a dissertation of one of their past advisees or someone else would be like, they did really well in terms of what you’re expecting, that also gives you clues. Y’all are in the chat. Um, Yes. Ro I would not expect anything less between you and your chair, both of you.

Writing Feedback:

Yes. That question is key cause that’ll have you out here for months, right? Alex about hello Give me a feedback. Okay. Now writing feedback. Your goal is to send something to somebody at least once a week, remember a piece of writing. Four shitty sentences, send it to somebody. And then at least once a month, you want to submit something to someone who’s faculty or chair or who has finished their program, right? You want to send it to them to get that feedback. And when you send the feedback, remember, ask them very clear instructions. I need you to look at this for APA, or I need you to look at this, um, for content or I need you to look at this and make sure that things are spelled correctly. Um, I’m adhering to the rules of writing, or like, can you help me fix work on academic writing or sounding quote, unquote scholarly. That’s a whole other conversation is why I’m putting it in quotations. That’s a whole conversation for later, but being very clear about what, what it is that you want them to look at. I would suggest that after they give you the feedback, review it and then ask them to schedule a time with you. And it can be just really quick, like 10 or 15 minutes so that you can get more of their thoughts about their feedback that they provide it right? Cause some things get lost in translation when they are written. But when you can have a conversation with someone, you can get more of where they’re coming from and you can ask clarifying questions and then address the feedback. Don’t be scared of the feedback. Just take one comment at a time. I think we said that yesterday.

So I want you really briefly to jot down three to five expectations that you could have for your chair and identify two or three people, which probably two or three people you just, um, you identified in that previous section, how can we move beyond being overwhelmed from feedback? A lot of breathing. And I, I truly do mean taking it one comment at a time. What I tell people is what I do is like copy and paste a section or a paragraph. And I copy that to a new document with their comments so that my brain can only look at that one thing. And I’m only addressing that one thing and I’m not going to the next one until I did that one, because otherwise you can, you keep opening the document. Like if you have a chair like mine, I don’t, I mean, track changes is our best friend. She got comments for days. And the fact that she has to write a whole section in her syllabus to explain the type of feedback she gives, it’s overwhelming. So I just used to just copy and paste into a new document and I’m like, I am addressing this. Um, yes. Yeah. Ask it come on. Khalia. Oh you had the same chair as well, you know? Yes. Section by section. Okay. Cause we don’t need Garretts coming after you. All right. Um, so jot that down. okay.

Scholar Basics:

So we’re moving into point 4, which is care. And we talked about the monthly development, right? We talked about the daily mindset practice that goes into care. I want to talk to you about scholar basics. And then we talked about rest and relaxation a little bit yesterday. I want to talk about it some more right now. So scholar basics, what we do inside of the group. We are every day, every day, we are striving to do these five things. Number one take at least 60 minutes for yourself every day. We not doing no work. We not answering emails. We not, um, what else , we not doing any laundry. We’re not washing the dishes, right?

We, you know, we are doing something that we like. You want to go outside, do that. You want to color, do that. You want to watch, you know, love and hip hop. You do that. 60 minutes for yourself. Drink at least 64 ounces of water a day. Um, water. This is also a perfect time to go get you some water. If you haven’t, we need water. Our bodies need water. A lot of the overwhelm and brain fog could be solved by water. Journal for at least 10 minutes a day. Right? It goes back to that daily mindset. Practice journaling doesn’t mean that you’re like today, this is what happened. No, it could just really just be you brain dumping out your thoughts. Move your body 0 minutes a day. Walk to the car, walk outside to the mailbox, you know, do a quick yoga session. Do some foam rolling stretching. I count that all is movement. Dance. Put a video up on YouTube, dance it out. And then the last one is complete your top three, right Going back to those 15 tasks. And we’ll talk more about what a top three is tomorrow, but essentially a top three, um, are the three tasks that you are promising that no matter what happens today, you’re doing these three things in each task should take 20 minutes or less for you to complete. Yeah. Then they don’t need to be something massive. We’re just completing these things. Ooh, hey Shanequa girl. Um, yin yoga. I’m gonna, I’m gonna need to go look this up.

Rest & Relaxation: 

Rest and relaxation. Take at least, right We’re talking about taking at least 60 minutes for yourself. You’re going to take at least a 24 hour break from all forms of work. And I used to say take a day, but I was working with Layla and she was like a whole day. Now I’m not going to be able to do a day in a sense, but I could do a 24 hour period. I don’t care how you define it. It’s 24 hours of no working, no working, engaging in play. Right. Cause Layla, I think yours was like Friday at like seven to Saturday at seven that’s, fine it’s 24 hours. So when will you take your 24 hour period for this upcoming week? Whatever. The first thing that came to mind, let us know. Okay. Mine. Um, my 24 hour period is usually Saturdays. Um, so for me, this is probably, um, towards the end of the week, Friday and Saturday of this upcoming week, I’m gonna just do both of those because I can’t do it earlier in terms of commitments I have. Um, so usually Saturday, but it will be Tuesday for this week. This coming Friday. Yes. Jot that down.

Okay. Let’s play. We can make it to number five. Elizabeth says, and I tried to do Thursday afternoon. Laverne feel afraid to say that consistent. You know, even if it’s not a whole day, right. The goal is about developing the practice. Right. So is there a time, like, I don’t know if you’re a morning person Laverne, but before the kids get up, is there a way to take some of few hours for yourself in the morning or even after they go to sleep? I don’t even know if they go to sleep. Cause I think some of them are older. Right. But, um, is there a way that you, like, I don’t exist for this, these two hours? You don’t know I’m here. Don’t talk to me. I’m going to hide in a bathroom. Um, yeah. I remember I told a client, a business client of like, you got to take a day off. I thought I told her she had to like quit everything. She was doing her job. Like, she just was like, no, that’s not possible. And now my friend over here taking three, four days off and just living life. I’m like, yes, I love it. Um, yes. Oh, the kids don’t like going to bed. They could guess. I mean you have to just be like fine. You can stay up, but I just don’t exist right now. Don’t come and talk to me. No, I can’t get you No snack. No, I can’t help you cook nothing. I don’t know how to help you with your homework right now. I love you. I mean it, but bye it is okay because when you’re good, right? You’re good to go. You can be more available to them.

I tell my sister-in-law all the time, you gotta hide from them. Otherwise they will just say, we’ll find you. They will take all the time and energy. Right? Um, so celebrating and celebrate, um, doing your weekly reflections, doing your monthly reflections and finding an active, active way Key word here is active way to celebrate during that 24 hour period that you’re not working. And so weekly reflection could look something like this on Fridays, you can say, how would I describe my progress this week? Like how would you describe it? Right, What worked for you this week? What would you like to change for the next week? What are you celebrating from this week? Try to list out five things that you’re celebrating. No celebration is too small. I showed up to my writing group check. I mean, I read over my latest draft check. I wrote four shitty sentences check it’s a celebration. Um, and how did I allow my community to help me reach my this week? This gets you in the practice of realizing like people are there for you or it could be an indication of, you may need to let people help you more.

You make get lost in the forest. It’s okay. Just keep moving. Keep moving. Monthly reflect reflection is, um, similar. This is important. Did you do, did you complete your monthly commitment and not being afraid to say no if it’s a no, but this is also a practice in being honest with yourself, did you do it or not simple? You may not have done it perfectly, but did you do it? Why or why not? And seeing what comes up because in the why or why not That’s the clues, what works what’s working for you and what you may need to change or tweak. Um, and then again, what are you celebrating and how did you allow your community to help you? This is all a part of journaling. You can just have simple answers. Like it could be one or two words to this, but this is for you again. It’s about you getting the information you need to help you.

Active Celebration: 

And then active celebration, right? Sometimes you just want to do hoodrat things with our friends. You can celebrate that way. Right. You can watch a whole series. Listen, Margaret don’t judge. Sometimes you need to do things. Sometimes you need to remember where you come from. But this doctor thing that these people like, I, you just like you just, you just play like a student on TV. You like do hoodrat things. Get lost in the book. You can buy um You can buy like new crystals. That’s your thing. You could do hot yoga class if that’s your thing. I’m just trying to, I was just trying to think of small things because a lot of times we think celebrating has to be this huge ordeal. No, it’s just giving back to ourselves. Excuse me. I missed that show too. I thought maybe it’s coming to Hulu or something. I don’t know. I feel like I saw something recently.

So celebrate what are five ways you could celebrate your progress? Just thinking of things so that you can have something to pull from. And if you feel, if you’re comfortable, if you want to share to help. Cause we may need to help our friends to come up with some ideas. So what ideas do you all have? Hagen daaz ice cream and Netflix. Yes. Dance to one ratchet hip hop song while making coffee. Just one. I feel like I got a whole playlist. I got I’m working on trying to, you know, learn to twerk. I don’t quite know how to move my booty muscles in that way. Um, but I’m working on it, um spend a day with a friend. Sleep. Yes. Go get a Starbucks drink. Yes. Practice in the mirror. I’ll try to live it. You know, I’m trying Elizabeth. Um, buying something new, new shoes workout outfits, my new thing has been, um, I restarted my subscription to Fabletics because I’m like, Ooh, cute workout clothes. They do. I’m like, I’m going out with this. Um, I know it’s supposed to be for working out, but it’s cute. Yeah. No. I mean it always giving you a good deal to get you started. Ooh. A fancy new fancy product. Yes. Workout clothes, work clothes all the same. Now it’d be like that. Elizabeth. Thank y’all.

Okay. Your brain might be like, Well, that was a lot. That was a lot. She wanted me to do all of that. How, when and where and how, how am I supposed to do all of that? It’s a lot because I try to make things very like clear and practical. And so I break a lot of things up into steps. Once you get into the habit of doing these things, it won’t seem the way it’s written here. It’s written here so that you have very clear instructions on what to do. Um, I just wanted to say that it’s, it’s a lot, it’s a lot, right? Because remember going back to yesterday, your brain might be telling you now I’m not going to be able to do all of this right? Because this job, it has three jobs, right? Conserve energy, avoid pain, and seek pleasure that you probably was like. I mean the celebration thing sounds good. And the rest sounds good, but all that other stuff, that’s a whole lot, right? Remember your brain, Don’t let The lizard brain kick in. Right? The lizard brain is what this is not all about. The lizard Brain is powerful in being like, we do these three things, but because we have this area of our brain, we can override that and be like, look, Friend, I got this. I got a plan. Trust the plan until the plan becomes so integral to who you are and on autopilot and it goes back here. We don’t have to use this area. But remember this area of our brain uses up a lot of calories and energy, which is why planning is key. And why trusting the plan is key because it’s only going to make a certain amount of decisions for the day. And if you spent a lot of time trying to figure out what am I wearing and what am I eating or where am I going? And when am I going to write? And Oh, about this thing, if you spend more time, like time making decisions, no matter how small, a decision you’re going to be using Up, like the, the amount of decisions that your brain could make. 

Join Finish Your Dissertation: 

Hey, you ready to take this work further? Then it’s time for you to join the finish your dissertation program. Finally get the tools, resources, and structure. You need to show up consistent and disciplined in your process. All you need to do is come on over to MarvetteLacy.com/apply and join the finish your dissertation wait list. I’ll see you there. Bye for now. Thanks. Thank you for joining in for today’s office hours. Make sure you come on Instagram and tag me at Marvette Lacy. Let me know what your thoughts were on today’s episode until next time. Do something to show yourself some love. I’ll talk to you next week. Bye for now.