Episode 55: Manage Your Anxiety & Finish Your Dissertation

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 and I would like to thank you for coming to today's office hours. Let's get started on today's episode.

Consider Joining Finish Your Dissertation: 

Hey, before we get in 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 skill your dissertation in 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.

Manage Your Anxiety & Finish Your Dissertation:

Oh Hey, if you're a new, I am Dr. Marvette Lacy. I help doctoral students start and finish their qualitative dissertation so they can graduate and become doctor. Today. I wanted to come on and talk to everybody about managing anxiety and finishing your dissertation cause you can do both at the same time. So for a lot of people today was probably day one or maybe you spent today preparing to have to stay at home. Especially if you are a student, you probably got an email from your institution that says something to the effect of stay at home. Don't pass, go, don't collect $200, don't do nothing but stay at home and keep your germs and yo self at home. Don't come to campus. And so you probably found yourself being like, okay, well that's great. That means I'm a have a lot of free time, I'm gonna get a lot of stuff done.

Or maybe you find yourself like many people who I've been talking to over the past few days, deep in anxiety. You've probably been in deep anxiety trying to figure out how are you going to manage your time, how are you going to do all the things? What happens if you get sick, all the questions right and you've probably been glued to the TV so that probably is not helping your anxiety whatsoever. And I started thinking about myself cause I woke up and I was like, I mean today is a regular day. Um, I'm a true introvert. I love being at home. I would stay at home all the time if I could, if it was healthy, but we need people. And so we need to see people. But yeah, so people were probably trying to figure out how to, how does this work from home situation, how do I do that?

And so I wanted to give a little bit of, of a structure of a framework that you can follow. But before I tell you how to manage your time and structure your time, I want to talk about something. So I used to be a person and in many ways I'm still this person in some parts of my life, but I used to be a person who would say, I don't need that much structure. I don't want to plan out my whole day. I need to be able to like move things around and I need to be free. I don't want to be held back by a schedule or something like that. And so I would put off planning. I mean I had like 10 planners though, so it quite didn't make sense and I would put some things on there. But I enjoyed the art of decorating my planner more than the actual utility.

And so I say in many ways that I'm a recovering procrastinator, like, like procrastination to a whole other level. There are many jobs, assistantships that I probably, somebody probably should have been like, you know what? We no longer need your services but out of love and out of kindness. They kept me on. But I can look back now and tell you that I did not have it together. Not only was I not showing up in my classes the way I needed to be, I wasn't showing up in my assistantship in the way that I needed to be. And of course, I would say like, yeah, this absolutely has everything to do with my anxiety. I'm trying to manage my anxiety. It's tough. I had a panic attacks and yes, all of that was true. And what I wish someone would've lovingly set me down, you know that you know that look that people give you, I wish somebody would have sat me down and would have been like, Hey girl, Hey, you need to get it together.

You out in these streets, you playing and you need to get your life together and this is how you get it together. Right. Cause a lot of times when we get into a hole of like procrastination or we're putting things off, it has nothing really to do with what's happening in the moment. It's the fact that we felt like we got off of our schedule right. And we're like, man, I messed up. So if mess up this one part or I was late turning this one thing in, that means I need to F it. Everything is going to hell. I don't need to turn it anything. Um, probably you are nervous. You think you've disappointed someone. So maybe you owed someone an assignment. Maybe you were supposed to do something for work and you feel like I can't face them because they're going to be upset with me.

They're going to think I'm lazy. They're gonna think I don't care. They're gonna think that I'm not a good student or a good employee, or that I'm not disciplined enough. I'm not organized enough. Like we make up all of these stories about what we think the other person is thinking about us because we didn't show up in the way that we thought we should, or we didn't show up perfectly. Meaning we're on top of it all the time. We show up to things 15 minutes early, we got, we got a whole year planned out that and for a lot of us, that's the image we have in our minds that we think we're supposed to show up that way. And if we do anything less than that, then it all goes to hell. That means we're not, we're not disciplined, we're not, we're not good people or whatever that means.

Right. And so really that's what I'm going to spend the rest of the week talking about. But I didn't, I didn't want to get into that conversation without giving you something tangible to actually use. Especially if you're going to be spending your days at home. You're going to be working from home. The best thing that you can do, not only for the sake of your dissertation, but for the sake of your health. As someone who has for my whole life navigated depression and anxiety, what I can tell you that works for sure is having some sort of structure in your life and giving your days some purpose, like knowing that you can contribute in a good way, but not in an overwhelming way of where you feel like I had to do 100 billion things, but if you know like, okay, I have these three things I need to do for the day and then I get to do whatever.

If that means I'm going to lay down and watch TV all day, that's fine. I'm going to be, I'm going to just talk to somebody the rest of the day, that's fine. But if you know, like I had these simple three things that I need to do, it's going to take me less than an hour to do that. You're more willing to get things done. And I would argue that you would be able to get way more done than that first initial hour. So I wanted to share that. I'm not saying this what I'm going to say I'm not, I'm never trying to come off as a person who has it completely together that I'm 100% perfect because I'm not, because if you ever texted me or call me, you already know I'm a work in progress there. That's one of my areas I need to work on. The calling back and the messaging back.

I'm getting better y'all. But I say this to say like, I know that this works. I use this with my clients. I just walked all my clients through this actually yesterday because I noticed that anxiety was increasing. And usually when anxiety increases, people do not focus on their own planning. So we are at , what's today's, date today is March 16th. We have roughly 15 days. I think we have 15 days left in the month. The, the number one question that I have for you is what do you want to accomplish related to dissertation related to writing. Maybe it's conference presentations maybe its grant applications. Right. In the next 15 days, what would you like to do? Like what would make the most difference if you completed it? Like it would just make you feel better. Is there something that's been like hanging around your to do list for weeks?

Is there something you like, I know I should be doing this but I've got time or is there something that's due at the end of the month that you feel like I definitely need to do that. Something I'm working on are um, a conference proposal. So there's a conference that proposals are due every April and every April or May that comes around. I'm like, Oh I got time cause they announced it like February or January. And I'm like, I have time. And then April comes and I'm like, I don't have time. Um, if you don't, if you're not familiar with me, my background is that I used to be a Director of a Women's Center on a college campus and April is Sexual Violence Awareness Month. And that meant that there was always something to do every day of that month. So by the time that April rolled around I didn’t have any time to submit to the conference, and I'm always at the last minute trying to rush and do it, but now this year I want to do it differently.

Manage Your Time with This Simple Planning Process

And so I'm going, I'm using this same process that I'm going to share with you that I want to submit at least one proposal to this conference. It is due on April 23rd it's happening. So I want to do it before March is over because I don't know what April is going to bring. And why would we wait when we have the time to do it now. So I ask you what is going to be your goal and maybe for you as a chapter? Maybe it's a manuscript, but I want you to get really clear about one thing. We're not doing 50 million things. We are going to focus on one thing for the next 15 days. What's going to be your one thing that you're going to do? Once you have that, I want you to sit that to the side for a minute and I want you to look at your week, Monday through Friday, what is your week?

Plan Your Week Out in Advance

And I want you to find 10 hours Monday through Friday you can pick two hours a day and I want you to look at your calendar and say, what do I have available? One, what do I have available, the time that I have available. Is that a good timeframe for me to show up and do some writing to do some work? Because you may have your evenings available but your brain may be fried and so you may not be able to work. So do you have time in the morning? It is important that you actually go to your calendar and put in a wish. I can like show you, I don't know how to do that, but on my calendar you will see that there's an hour every morning that I have blocked and it was an hour in the late afternoon that I have blocked because I do this exercise with everything, but you want to find two hours and listen what we're not doing.

We're not going to say, Oh, I looked at my schedule and I have you know Wednesday morning free and I have some time on Friday evening. That means nothing. That means nothing to your brain. That means nothing to your plan. That means nothing to your goal. If you are one of those people who are like, Oh, I got some free time and I can do some work at this time and that time it's not happening. I want you to count it as it's not going to happen. You're not going to sit there and work. Just because you and your mindset, you had the time available. It does not mean that you're actually going to sit down and work. So I would say open up a calendar or a planner. If you don't have one, the Google is free. Open up a Google calendar or open up the calendar on your phone and sit down and really think about what are the two hours you're going to set aside Monday through Friday to work on this goal that you're going to do by the end of March and actually put it in your calendar as an appointment.

The same thing as if you had a class that you had to go to or you had to know you had like a doctor's appointment to go to. You show up for those why? Because one its in your calendar. Two, they probably would charge you if you didn't show up, but I want the same energy that you have for those things. I want you to have for showing up for yourself. Why? Because you are important and I'm about to go on a side rant right now. It's not even in my notes. We've been socialized to believe that everybody else needs needs to come first and that that we have to put ourselves off before we can get to what we need to do and what that's going to do is keep you working for everybody else and doing everything for everybody else and you won't finish your degree.

Find 10 hours in Your Schedule to Set Aside

You will be in your program year after year thinking like where where is my progress? And it's because you're putting everyone else first and all I'm asking you to do is find 10 hours of your week, 10 hours Monday through Friday. If that doesn't work for you and you need to go into the Saturday and Sunday, that's fine, but what I will say is keep it as close to 10 hours as possible. You don't need to be working 20,30, 40 hours on your dissertation. There's no reason why you should be doing that. That means you either have a planning issue or you're focusing on activities that are not bringing you progress If most of the activities that you're focusing on are not actually putting words on paper that you can send to your chair. There is something off and we can talk about that more, but I'm going to end this part of the rent, so the first thing is getting clear on what are you going to do in the next 15 days.

What's going to be your goal, your one goal. The second thing is finding 10 hours in your week, Monday through Friday. If you need to take it a week at a time, that's fine, but 10 hours that you're going to actually schedule on your calendar for working on your goal. All right. The third thing is you're going to take out a sheet of paper, Tyrone, your favorite traps home. It could be Megan, Megan The Stallion. That's what I listened to. You're going to write out everything that you think you should do. You could do, you would do. It would be nice if I did this to complete this goal that I set for myself by the end of March. You just want to write out a whole list as much as you can think about, so you want to just brain dump a whole list. I usually, it takes me about two or three songs, maybe a little bit longer if it's been a while since I actually planned out things.

But you only want to think about the tasks that are related to your goals. So whatever your goals, you want to write all of that out. Don't worry about how you're going to get it all done. Just write it all out. Okay? Once you are good with that, I always tell people, take a break. Go drink some water, drink your water. Especially this time. Drink your water. Take a break. It's important to take a break. Cause what happens is as soon as people they like do the brain dump, they feel this urge to like, Oh, now I need to go and attack this list. Nope, we're not doing that yet. We're not at that part yet. Don't try to figure out how you're gonna make it all fit. We not there yet. We are at the point of what you need to empty out your brain because the, the point of emptying out your brain is so that you can operate from a clean like canvas, right?

Like for example, we all have that junk drawer that like closet that we, we don't want to show to people when they come over cause we so embarrassed by it. There's so much clutter there. If you ever took a afternoon or something, a couple of hours to clean it out and reorganize it and donate the stuff that you need to donate and give it away and you opened that door again, you do know how free it is. That's the same process that you're doing here. When you're emptying out your brain and you're doing a brain dump, you're now, you can see the space you're working with and you can rearrange things in the way that you want to. So that's just an analogy for you to think about. All right, so brain dump. Now you want to go through this list because the goal isn't to do all the things on this list.

Translate Your Scheduled Time Into Your Calendar

Here's another thing that I noticed with people when they plan and I ask them, did you do your planning for the week, they tried to fit all of the things that they think they should be doing into their schedule. There's a lot of things that you don't need to be doing. Here's another rant. I'm willing to bet if I asked you to like audit your time for the past seven days and asked you to like, how did you spend your days? What were you working on? I'm willing to bet that 30-40% of what you did for the past or you've done for the past seven days were things that you didn't need to be doing, you didn't need to be doing, you had no business doing you was, you should have delegated that to someone. You should have asked someone else to help you or you should have just flat out just said, nah, nah, it's going to be a no for me.

Take Time For YOURSELF- EVERYONE ELSE CAN WAIT

But again, going back to what I said in the beginning, a lot of times we have been socialized to think that we need to do everything and be everything for everybody. So you have your brain dump list. Now you're going to go through and you're going find 15 items that would make the most difference for you and your goal. So we have our 15 day goal. What are the 15 things that if you did those, so circle them, highlight them. If you did those 15 things, that would make the most difference and you want to take those 15 things and put them on a different sheet of paper. Once you have it on a different sheet of paper, I want you to decide how much time do you think it would take you to complete that. That's all we need to do. Just use your first mind, however long you think it's going to take you just write it next to the, to the item.

Now you have an idea. So what you've done with that, is you prioritize the tasks that are most important for you to focus on from that big brain dump list, you assigned at a time limit. So you have an idea of how long it's going to take you. Now what you can do is since you've already determined the ten hours that you're going to be working for the week, you can start plugging things in. And I do mean you should literally go into your calendar and plug it in. So if it's going take you 30 minutes to outline the presentation, that's the first thing you do in your first hour. And then the next thing might be, I've got to brainstorm a list of questions. How ever long you said that that was going to take putting it in your calendar. What that does is when it's time for you to work, right?

Say you said your two hours for tomorrow are going to be 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM after you've worked a whole day, you had a whole day, you're tired, and you're like, I don't really feel like it. You can go to your, your office or where ever you are going to go? Starbucks or whatever at your five o'clock time. And then you know exactly what you need to do. Oh, the first thing is I need to outline my presentation. Um, it's been 30 minutes. I'm gonna set my timer to do that and I'm an outline it. Some of you may be asking, well, what if it takes longer? What if it goes shorter? Things take the amount of time that you give them. That's one. We could talk more about that later on this week. But however long you say something's going to take, that's how long it's going to take.

Two, If you did not properly like break it down and we can talk about that too. You just plan it for the next available time. The key here, and that's the whole system before I go to a whole other thing, that's the whole system. So to recap is first figured out, what have you got to do? What is your, we have 15 days in March. What are you going to do? What's the one thing you're going to do. Two finding 10 hours Monday through Friday that you're going to set aside solely for working on this goal. Number three, you got to brain dump everything out that you think you need to do in order to complete this goal. Four, you're going to find the 15 the most important or the most critical 15 things on that brain dump list that you need to do and if it's not 15 things its fine, but whatever, 15 things that you're going to bring to a new list and you got to assign a time limit of how long do you think it would take you to accomplish those 15 things and then you're going to schedule it right into your calendar and that is your plan of action for the week and we're not going to get too concerned about if the timing is right.

You don't have enough information to know that it's only when you start, you sit down to do it and you see how long things take. Well, you know how to more accurately assign time limits to things.

What I will be coming back on throughout the week to be talking about is I want to address things that I'm sure is cause they're going to come up. Well you said in the beginning Marvette that if you know I get and I get anxious and that if I like deviate from my plan at all, then I go down the spiral. We are going to talk about like the mindset you need to have in order for this system to work or any system, if it's not my system or whatever planning system that you have. We're going to talk about the mindset that you need to have in order for this to work and for you to be able to be someone who shows up and do what they say they They will do it. Who puts themselves first and who achieves their goals. We're going to talk about that, but the first step is you have to plan it out before we can even address the other things.

You are smart enough to figure this out. You are smart enough to finish your dissertation. You know enough right now to finish your dissertation and to even follow this plan. You are enough just as you are. You not have to change anything in order to follow a plan, and if you deviate from the plan or anxiety gets the best of you this week or procrastination happens, that does not make you any less of a person, of a good person, of a worthy person, ect. Just separate. We just need to talk about how to find a plan or how to believe some new thoughts to help you follow your plan, but it has nothing to do with if you're worthy enough. You can finish a dissertation right now and this is one of the steps to getting you to finishing the dissertation. We can talk about the hiding for days and not telling anybody that you missed an assignment or you missed a deadline because you're nervous or scared to talk to them.

We're going to talk about what to do when life happens and your plan is disrupted. How do you pivot and change? If you are like, I'm going need a little bit more than just the live video. I'm going to need, I'm going to need your assistance assistance. I want you, if you're on Facebook you will see it in the description section. You schedule your next step call. If you are on Instagram just write down your email address and I will email you the link or DME too because Instagram is easier to DM. Just let me know that you want the link. Just write link and I will send it to you but a next step means we get on the phone with each other. I'm going to ask you about your dissertation, how things are going and we're going to determine if we would be a good fit to work with one another.

Consider Joining Finish Your Dissertation

Many of you may know and if you don't, I have a program it's called finish your dissertation its where I work with doc students to do as the name implies, finish your dissertation. It is an experience like no other. It is in the group format because I believe that we are nothing without our people so you are able to get one on one coaching with me as well as you get writing accountability groups and you get writing feedback. People are able to finish way more in one session with me than they would be in a whole month. What I just went through right here is just me scratching the surface of what we do inside of the group and if this sounds like something you're like, I need to be in it, I need this in my life. I need you to schedule your next step call.

Do not let another month go by another semester, go by another year, go by without you getting the support that you need. What I'm doing right now on this call, I do this on a regular basis and inside the group and when you work with me, because the goal here as the name applies is for you to finish your dissertation and I don't believe that you have the luxury of time or the luxury of like, Oh, I'm just got to play around in the literature. No, you need to write an actual dissertation that you can defend so you can graduate. We don't have years and years and years to be hanging out in a program just for the sake of hanging out in a program. The best way to learn how to be a great researcher and a great scholar is to do the actual research and the writing. So schedule your next step call. I'm going to call it, cause I've been talking way longer, then I intended. Um, but I am curious to know what your thoughts are and thank God for joining. Bye.

Closing 

Thank you for joining in for today's office hours. Make sure you come on Instagram and tag me at @MarvetteLacy, 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.