I came across this post on twitter recently and I’ve been reflecting on it ever since. It’s from Katy Peplin who runs the company Thrive PhD. She creates awesome content to help PhD students well…thrive duh. Following her on twitter (@ThrivePhd) has definitely made a positive impact on my weekly productivity and overall well-being. You should for sure be following her too.
This tweet really resonated with me because I’m in a high producing, high pressure season right now. I’m finishing up my dissertation and ramping up to begin my postdoc. I’m balancing writing grants and fellowships for additional postdoc funding while also completing data analysis and writing papers for my thesis. In short, every day is busy and there are a lot of different balls up in the air I’m attempting to juggle. I don’t feel burned out, but I am weary. This tweet got me thinking, am I running low on fuel?
What is fuel anyway? We talk a lot in grad school about passion, motivation and staying consistent. Nevertheless, the conversation is always about maintaining motivation and it’s usually really vague. The current prescription is focusing on “keeping hope alive”and other cliche maxims. What’s really lacking is taking an account of all the energy inputs and outputs in your life at any given moment. No matter what season of output you’re in, the essential question is whether your various inputs can sustain your level of production.
First you’ll need to determine what inputs give your energy. I like how Katy lists a bunch of different categories that can work as fuel. I’m annoyed when the only suggestion for motivation that is given in professional development seminars is to “Think about why you do this research and remember that you love it”. There’s nothing wrong with that advice, but it’s annoyingly inadequate and I’m tired of it being touted as the only solution. There are plenty of other ways to fuel your work. Maybe it’s prioritizing your time in the mornings and refusing to schedule meetings during those protected blocks of time. Or maybe it’s cooking dinner with a roommate or going hiking on the weekends. Whatever it may be, take some time to discover what things are draining you and what things are giving you energy.
After re-evaluating my habits, I realized that I need more alone time and more time connecting with my family. In the past week I’ve be more intentional about calling and texting my family and catching up with them. They keep me grounded and I gain so much peace from talking with them regularly. I also have been less responsive to friends and colleagues about hanging out. Yes I’m an extrovert, but I desperately need long periods of time alone to think and just be. I’ve turned down a lot of plans and muted a bunch of group chats and I couldn’t be happier. It’s hard because I genuinely love connecting with my friends (and the FOMO is real!) but in this season I need to be a bit less connected for my sanity, for my fuel.
Overall this exercise was extremely helpful for me, and I was able to make some changes that improved my productivity and mental clarity. So I invite you to ask yourself these same questions.
What is your fuel? AND Do you have enough of it?
And if the answer is no, what are you gonna do to get more of it?