Announcements

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Welcome back to a second guest newsletter, this time by my friend and collaborator, Dr. Katy Peplin from Thrive PhD.

You might remember Dr. Peplin from AcWriMo, a month of free resources and writing support that she has hosted every November for the last eight years. In 2024, Katy invited me to work with her to make AcWriMo extra supportive for all you academic writers. You can sign up for AcWriMo for free here.

Dr. Peplin and I will be hosting a workshop called Will This Work For Me? Experimental Approaches to Scholarly Life on Friday October 16. You can learn more and sign up here.

When I invited Katy to write a guest newsletter, I put in a special request for her good/better/best approach. It’s been such a helpful reframe for my own approach to productivity, and I hope you find it helpful, too! Enjoy today’s guest post, and I’ll be back in your inbox soon.

Take care and talk soon,

Dr. Kate

at my core, i’m an all or nothing girl.

i want to run a marathon, or not run at all. i will either clean the whole house or really struggle to bring one item up the stairs to put it away. and this tendency is at its most powerful when i’m planning.

planning serves two purposes: it helps us surface the tasks that most need our attention, and it helps to reduce decision fatigue. ideally, planning tools make it so that when you sit down to do something, you can see easily what to do, and trust that those things are going to be the most effective, efficient uses of your time and energy at that point in time. 

but if you’re anything like me, you are never more confident in your ability to do the impossible than when you’re planning. i have a tendency to plan for the best version of myself. she’s endlessly energetic, she never has any unexpected tasks or caretaking responsibilities pop up, she always executes the plan without deviating at the first time of asking. 

but in real life, i’m a parent of a two and a half year old who is still building their immune system. i have a chronic illness and deal with fatigue, brain fog, and pain more days than not. and a lot of what i do day to day is write, a creative, generative process that notoriously is difficult to plan and schedule. my energy has limits. my time is not always my own. and sometimes, i see the plan and i just don’t want to. 

i don’t necessarily want to plan for less. i get inspired by big goals. i just want to be able to quickly see how i can adjust when it becomes clear that i am not working with the best case scenario. in the past, if i couldn’t do it perfectly, i would just….not do it. but if i define different levels of completion, it really helps me adjust my thinking, and still feel good about getting part of something done.

for example, if you want to finish revising a chapter, you could set up three tiers in your plan:

• good: work on revisions three poms a day

• better: revise two most important sections

• best: finish revising whole draft

or maybe you want to incorporate more movement into your schedule, but if you put “go for a run” on your schedule, it’s intimidating enough to avoid it. so instead, you could plan:

• good: a walk around the block with a podcast

• better: youtube yoga video

• best: go for a run

don’t love the good better best language? here are some alternates that work well:

• baseline / stretch / challenge 

• shallow end / laps / deep end

• toe in / dunk / swim

• cool / warm / hot

• taste / snack / meal

• walk / trot / gallop

you can use this tool on a day to day basis, creating options for a task that feels sticky, or for a two week sprint, month long plan, or goals for the whole semester. this tool works because it gives you options outside of the “perfect / zero” binary we all can get caught in, and makes it easier to see how you can make progress when the best case scenario isn’t on the table. you still have the challenge and dopamine that planning for your best self can bring, and you also get the next steps outlined for the version of your energy and time that is available on any given day. 

and if your brain, like my brain, insists that doing something is not effective, not efficient, and rarely actually makes a difference, i encourage you to run an experiment. try this tool - or any other tool you’re curious about! - and measure the outcomes. this is the process that dr. henry and i teach in our experimental approaches workshop, and it is the process that forms the bedrock of how i work with clients, and work with myself. knowing what works for you, and under what conditions, is one of those “sounds easy when you say it, devilishly difficult in practice” skills that form the foundation of a sustainable, supported working life, and that is what i wish for you, and for all of us.

Dr. Katy Peplin is the founder of Thrive PhD, a business born out of her own journey through the PhD, and the joys and challenges of being a grad student and a human at the same time. She earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan, with a dissertation centered on animals on film and media. Throughout her degree, she also worked as a teaching consultant at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, practiced yoga regularly, and lived with chronic illness and anxiety. These days, she's super into knitting, colorful water bottles, and helping academics build a sustainable and supported working life now, rather than waiting until they finish The Thing (because there will always be another Thing). Learn more at thrive-phd.com.