Introduction

Hey friend, the time has come to finish your dissertation, graduate and become doctor. Welcome to office hours or 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 and I would like to thank you for coming to today's office hours. Let's get started on today's episode. Hey, before we get into today's episode, I want to let you know about finish your dissertation. Do you know about it? It is my signature group designed to take you from being candidate to doctor. I'm talking about getting the structure you need in your dissertation process so that you can show up every week consistently and focused on achieving your dissertation goals. We meet on a weekly basis to really make sure that you're maximizing your time and that you know the exact activities you need to focus on to move your dissertation forward and best of all the community is the best thing out there. I mean, we're talking students who are dedicated, who are supportive, who will hold you accountable when you need it, crushing their dissertation goals. So if this sounds like anything that you would be interested in and you could use a little bit more focus and accountability in your dissertation process, then you need to come on over to Marvettelacy.com and learn more about the finish your dissertation group. Also, you can schedule your next step call while you're there so that we can have one on one time to talk and discuss you, your dissertation and your needs to make sure that finish your dissertation is going to be a good fit for you. Again, you can go over to Marvettelacy.com to learn more. Now let's get on to today's episode

How Much Are You Taking Care of Yourself?

Hello, I am Dr. Marvette Lacy. I help doctoral students write and finish their dissertation so they can graduate and become doctor. I wanted to come in today to talk to everyone about how much are you taking care of yourself? So a lot of times people come to me and they ask me about managing their time, managing their energy, and I always ask them, how well are you taking care of yourself? People would say, well, I don't, I don't have time to do that because I'm trying to finish a dissertation. And I would say, if you want to finish your dissertation then you need to take care of yourself, and I know that self care, especially on Instagram, people got all the pretty pictures, they got all the things right of how you should do it. But I'm talking about simple, going back to the basic things that you need to do.

And I didn't use to focus on this in my coaching, but then I started to think back to when I was writing my dissertation and what I see my clients doing. And it's you sitting at a desk for 12 to 14 hours. Some days it's you trying to put your phone on silent not talking to anyone, right? Just trying to focus cause you want to make some serious progress and you look up, your whole day is gone. If you had dogs, you didn't walk them. If you had family or other people living in the house with you, you don't even know what they had been doing because you've been focused on your dissertation, right? So how can you really expect to be able to show up and give your all to a dissertation when you don't have anything to give? When you don't have any energy, you don't have any motivation, you don't have anything to give, but you still will yourself to sit at your desk and work for hours and hours.How do you expect yourself to be able to do that if you haven't taken care of your basic needs? Last week I had Dr. TJ Stewart come and talk with my clients in the finish your dissertation group, which the doors are open by the way. And so if you need any type of structure, focus, consistency in your dissertation process and you definitely should join us, go ahead and schedule your next step call and we can talk and I can learn more about you and I can let you know. We can, we can talk together to see if finish your dissertation would be a good fit for you. But yes, what I focus on with clients is saying like, do you feel good? And when Dr. Stewart came to talk with the group, he said if you're showing up with the energy level is at a three, three out of 10 right, then you should expect to write at a level three. 

Rate Your Energy, Focus & Peace:

So to give you some context, every time that I meet with my group, every time we have a group session, I always open it up for folks to check in and I always ask them to rate themselves on a scale of one to ten. One being, I don't have any of it, I don't know where it is, and 10 being I have all of it, it's a good day.I ask folks to rate themselves on a scale of one to 10 their energy level, their focus level, right? So energy could be like, how, how much energy do you have for this session right now? How do you feel in your body? How much energy do you have to devote towards working today? Focus: How well are you going to be able to pay attention to what's going on and stay, keep your attention focused on whatever you have set out for yourself to do during that working session.Also ask them to rate their level of peace because I'm trying to get a sense of how are they doing mentally. Are you having a stressed out day? Is there something else going on in life that we all should be aware of? 

Scholar Basics 101

And then the last thing I ask folks to rate themselves on are scholar basics. And if you are new or you've never heard me talk about scholar basics, they are five things that I urge everyone, particularly my clients to work on on a daily basis. It is what you should strive to get done every day. If you don't do anything else. 

1.Stay Hydrated

And the scholar basics are number one, drink 64 ounces of water at least 64 ounces of water. We need water. We are chronically dehydrated around these parts and there is no way that anything can run smoothly, work smoothly, have any type of energy, anything without water. So at least 64 ounces of water. 

2. Take One Hour for Yourself

Number two, take at least one hour for yourself. Rachel Hollis says, if you don't have an hour a day for yourself, you don't have a life. So you should be able to have an hour every day that you can take care of yourself. And this doesn't mean that you have an hour and you're going to clean up or you're going to do laundry. No an hour to dedicate towards something that helps fill you back up. That could be you're going to take a walk, you're going to do some yoga. Maybe you're gonna watch the show like I'm watching. Love is blind on Netflix. Maybe that's what you're going to do with your hour, but your hour should be something, and that may mean that you have to wake up an hour early in order to get that in, right? So we had 64 ounces of water at least an hour for yourself.

3. Write 10 minutes A Day

Number three is you write 10 minutes a day. I'm sure as a doc student, you have heard people tell you that you should be writing every day. I do not think that that means that you should be writing in your dissertation every day. I actually think that means you should be journaling every day, and if you're not a journaler, I'd be like, Nope, I don't like that. I highly, highly, highly encourage you to write down your thoughts, at least 10 minutes a day to do a brain dump. That means take out a plain sheet of paper. I use a notebook and I just opened to a new sheet. I put on some my best trap music collection in the morning and I just write out my thoughts. I write them out as they come to me. It could be like, why am I not still in the bed? I don't want to do this day? I don't want to go to work. Oh, I'm so excited about talking to so-and-so. Whatever comes to my mind is what I write out for legit five to 10 minutes and that's what I call it a day. The reason why this is important. One, it helps you to be aware of what you think about on a regular basis that you are not even conscious of because you've been thinking about it so much that your brain has put it to the part of your brain that's unconscious and it's just on a loop. But you need to know what's going on in your mind on a daily basis. Because that is where our anxiety and our deep rooted things come up that may prevent us from writing, right? 

So the second part too is if you are in the middle of writing your dissertation and you are in the midst of particularly data collection or any part really, and you're trying to make sense of things and you're trying to process things when you are journaling or you're doing something else that's not like designated for your dissertation, your brain is still trying to make meaning of what you're writing. It's trying to process everything. And sometimes you may not be aware of the connections you're making until you start to journal and you start to write your thoughts out. And then you'll be surprised like what comes up. I have been blown away by the connections and things that I've been able to come up with in writing, in business and even like doing my dissertation. So I highly encourage people to journal and if you watched my last video, if you've worked with me before, you probably know that one of the first steps when you do work with me is that I have you journal. Students tend to get a little bit frustrated with me because they don't understand that first and I'm like, you have so much knowledge in your brain already that you're not giving yourself credit for. You know all the answers you think you don't know, but you haven't given yourself a chance to really explore that. And when you journal, when you write down your thoughts, all of that comes out onto paper and then you are able to operate from a cleaner canvas, your brain, to be able to figure out what do I need to do with this information and to be able to make more progress in your dissertation. A lot of times people are coming and have a lot of things, like a lot of emotions, a lot of like, I mean hurt, a lot of just confusion and rightfully so, and at the same time like you want to finish your dissertation, you're trying to make progress. And this is, I have found this to be the most effective way at being able to make meaning of that, figure that out and be able to push through in a more healthy way to be able to make progress on a dissertation.

4. Move Your Body for 10 Minutes A Day

Right? So I'm talking about the five basics. Number one was to drink 64 ounces of water. Number two was to take an hour at least a day for yourself to do something to fill yourself up. Number three was to write for 10 minutes a day. Number four is to move your body for at least 10 minutes a day. I was tempted to put longer than 10 minutes, but I felt like people would just get overwhelmed. But the 10 minutes is it's enough for your blood to get flowing. But it's also seems like easier to manage when you're in the middle of writing and you're like, your alarm goes off or whatever you set. And it's like you need to move for 10 minutes. And there's clubs where people who are just like me, when you are sitting down and you are writing for hours and hours and you don't even get up to eat, you don't get up to go to the restroom, you don't get up to like drink water, you don't get up to do anything. This is a reminder that you need to get up. And movement in general helps to change our brain chemistry. And it's just, again, it helps things to flow so that we can just put things into perspective. So 10 minutes a day.

5. Execute Your Top 3

And number five is to execute your top three every day and your top three are your top three priorities for the day. Each of those top priorities should take you 20 minutes or less to complete. So some examples would be, Oh I need to go pick up a book from so and so. I need to edit one paragraph and I need to read one article. Those are the type of tasks that would be appropriate for your top three and people at first looking from the outside will say, well, I'll never be able to make serious progress by just doing a top three and they don't, they like bypass it and then a month later when they're still in the same spot they were in 30 days before trying to figure out how to get it all done. We come back to this whole idea of have you been doing your top three every day? And I can tell the people who do their top three every day because they are like they are accomplishing their monthly goals, they are making serious progress in their dissertation. They feel better, right? They have more energy when they show up to write. They're more motivated to write because they had the momentum of finishing things every day. They're making progress on a daily basis because they're trusting the process. But when you're trying to say, I'm going to write a whole chapter in one day and you don't do it, then your brain feels like you didn't do anything. Like for example, have you ever written out a to do list and it may have had 10 items and you're like, today I'm going to get these 10 things done and you get to the end of the day and you may have gotten seven out of 10 done, but your brain can only focus on the three things that you did not do.

And so then you just feel like shit for the rest of the day cause you're like, I didn't do anything. I'm a bum, but really you did seven things. But the, to take a step back to me, I would argue that the bigger problem was that you tried to do 10 things in a day, but when you have something more manageable like three and you get that done at the beginning of your day, your brain is like, yes, what else can I do? And you're more likely to do the 10 things because you're starting off the day with momentum versus if you set up your day and you say, I'm doing 10 things, that's overwhelming, it seems large and you don't have motivation to do it. And you just procrastinate and you continue to put things off, and that's how you get to the end of the day, only doing seven out of the 10 things.

Scholar Basics Recap

So I hope that makes sense and you're following me, but this is about how do you show up to take care of yourself so that you can have more motivation to show up for your dissertation. And so those five basics is what I would highly encourage you to start off your day doing and I will repeat them. The five basics are drinking at least 64 ounces of water every day. Take an hour for yourself to do something that feels yourself back up. Number three is the right for 10 minutes a day by journaling your thoughts. Just simply writing out your thoughts on a piece of paper. Number four is to move your body for at least 10 minutes a day to get the blood flowing. Preferably you would do this while you were writing or working to give yourself a break, a mental break and number five is to execute your top three every day. These are three tasks that will take you 20 minutes or less each to complete and you will start off your working time, whatever you scheduled for your working time by completing these top three as a way to set the tone and the momentum for the day. It's what I swear by, I can tell you all the things about your dissertation and what you need to write and we can do a whole timeline and I can tell you like what to look up, but if you're not taking care of yourself, if you're not attending to your body and your mind, none of those strategies would matter. You will not do them. There are people who are sitting with whole detailed timelines and outlines. They either got from me, they got from their chair, they got from someone but they're unable to complete them and it's because they have been neglecting themselves and particularly their mindset to help them with the motivation and inspiration needed to show up.

Join Finish Your Dissertation 

So I hope that helps someone. Again, the doors to finish your dissertation are open. It is a six month group program that is designed to help you get to the next milestone in your dissertation process. So when I say milestone, I'm talking about dissertation proposal or data collection and analysis or finishing your whole dissertation. If you want to make some serious progress in the next six months you need to be in finish your dissertation. It gives you the structure you need in order to show up consistently in your dissertation and have the focus needed on a weekly and daily basis to finish the dissertation. If it sounds at all, of any interest to you, let me know. Make sure you put down in the comments or DM me and just say next call and I will send you the link and we'll schedule a call. The link is also in the bio you'll see a little, um, a little button that says book and it's just a 30 minute conversation. We just get on a video chat and I just ask you what's going on, tell me about your dissertation and tell me what will help you the most and I'll tell you more about the finish your dissertation group and if it'll be a right fit for you. But I know that it helps people. We just had someone come in today for the first time and she said, I didn't know how much I needed this. I did not know how much I really needed this. She was having a difficult time showing up to write and she came on for her first call and got so much done. I know it works. I've seen so many people come in and get their whole life.

Final Thoughts

So again, if you feel like this will be of any interest to you, let me know. But I'm going to go back and finish up some work and finish watching love is blind. This is how I'm justifying watching TV this late because I'm like, imma do something productive while I watch and scream at the TV, at the show? If you're not watching the show, what are you doing with your life? You need to go watch it. But, um, that's gonna be it for tonight. Have a good Sunday. Make sure you do your planning and make sure you follow the scholar basics. Bye. 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.