Speaker 1: Get ready for your eyes to roll back in their sockets because this is all of the cringe-worthy advice that I've been given throughout my PhD and in my career afterwards that just makes me cringe. All right, the first one is you should always include the word yet if you've not quite achieved something. So for example, I haven't got the results I need yet. And this adding yet at the end of sentences when you're thinking like you can get yourself caught in this negative kind of spiral of thoughts and putting the word yet at the end just remind you that it will take more effort, it will take more time and that it's not a permanent condition. Including the word yet just means that your mind is focused on solving that problem and getting to a goal rather than just being stuck, sat in this kind of like pit of failure. And it works as crazy as it sounds and as reluctant as I was to embrace it, that word yet really helps. Fail fast and fail often. It was something I heard all of the time and it just became a bit of a trope. But importantly, I've learned that that means just don't worry about failure, push on through, try to fail and learn from it. Fail fast and fail often is something that will get you through your PhD and your career afterwards if you decide to stay in research or really whatever you want to do. So learning about the edge cases of where you're at, pushing it out and just failing means you know that this way is probably not an option, you know another way is not an option and particularly in the early stages of a PhD, failing fast and failing often means that you'll just get a sense of where you should go. You know, all of the successful people I've ever spoken to just talk about failure, just talk about how they failed after one thing after another and eventually you will hone in on the thing that works and early on in your PhD, fail, fail, fail and then as you get sort of closer to the end, you'll start doubling down on the things that work. Brilliant, something you don't want to hear but something that does work. Staying in the failure ecosystem, I've always heard people say that you should celebrate failure and I cringe at it, especially when you're in the failure zone and you're failing a lot. Celebrating failure or at least within your group, celebrating times when you failed because you tried is so important because it just sort of like shifts that mindset from failure being a permanent condition to something that is just part of the process and it's not something I liked to hear. When I was failing, I just pushed back against this as much as possible because no one wants to be told like, well, you know, you should be celebrating this when you get that first emotional hit when something doesn't work but trust me, just learning to overcome that first feeling of failure and disappointment and then go, well, that was great because now I know this and this and this. It's about reframing that failure, I guess, more than anything and just celebrating it as something that shows progress really does help and it's something that is super powerful, particularly if you can get a group around you that will ask you, how have you failed today? And they go, that is brilliant. Well done, let's keep trying. You know, that is part of a community approach to failure that I have found is incredibly powerful. Aim to become 1% better every single day. I used to cringe at this so much until I realized that it was about making sure that you see your PhD or your big project in front of you as a series of small steps where you get a little bit better every day rather than trying to make big leaps and bounds. It's more about expectation setting rather than just being 1% better and what I think people really mean by this is just do a little bit every day. Like, aim to be a little bit better, aim to get a little bit of your project done every single day no matter what. So even if you're having an off day like we all do, you just say to yourself, okay, for the next hour, I'm just going to try to do this thing and sometimes I just say to myself, you know what? I'm going to try this for 10 minutes and it's amazing once you've got over that first barrier of entry, you do work a little bit longer than you want but I make sure that my expectations are not that I'm going to do these amazing, awesome things every single day but rather, I'm going to make little tiny steps towards where I want to be and where I want my PhD to go and it can feel some days when you do that 1% that you've kind of gone backwards because you've failed but really, it's about little tiny steps. 1% every single day adds up if you do that for an entire PhD which spans multiple years. Done is better than perfect. It's something that I used to think people who couldn't make something perfect would say. Does that make sense? Essentially, I just thought it was like a get out of jail free card for people that just didn't want to put in the effort but what I've realized going forward is that you get out sort of like diminishing returns once you've got your project, your thesis, your paper to a certain standard. There's no point spending the extra five hours to improve it, that extra two to 3% that quite honestly, not many people really notice. So getting something done and pushing it out into the world is better than aiming for perfection. I do it now with this YouTube channel, I do it with my blogs, I do it with whatever I can. I do it to remind myself that perfection is not the goal. Rather, it's about making sure you are putting effort into something and getting it to a point where you can release it into the world. So don't focus on perfection and also, there is no such thing as perfection despite what my mom would say. Something I really took from Stoicism that I like is the fact that we view events with our own lens. So the advice is, it's not good, it's not bad, it just is. The thing that makes something good or bad is your own perception of the events. You not getting a certain thing during your PhD or not achieving a certain thing is just an event. It's you and your perception that you project onto that event that makes you go that it's good, it's bad, it's terrible, whatever it is. And it's something that really allows me to take a step back. And when I first heard this, I always thought, oh, this is so stupid. But essentially, just being able to see past your own filters and through a really sort of middle ground, non-emotional state just means that you're able to move forward more quickly. Like sometimes things don't go my way and I just go, oh, okay, that's happened. And then I just sort of don't go, well, it's bad because of this or it's good because of this. I just see it for what it is and try to move on. And it's not necessarily something that I use every day, but I do have to remind myself that I don't have control over these things and it's just an event that's happened and where do I go from here? It's happened, there's no way I can change it, so what do I do from here? And that little bit of stoicism I think injected into a PhD will just keep you moving forward without sort of dwelling on things, having huge emotional up and downs. And it's something I wish I had been told throughout my PhD for sure. Staying in the stoicism bubble, I also really like the advice that you should only worry about what you can control. During a PhD, during your life, during your career, there are so many things that are just outside of your control. But worrying about them serves no purpose whatsoever because you can't control them. So if I find myself sort of like spiraling a little bit and starting to worry about things, I just make a little list and I say what are the things that are in my control and I make sure I focus my energy towards those. Sometimes it's hard because the emotional response wants to deal with something. It could be even another person, you can't control other people, but you can control how you react to things and what you do, that is within your control. So these little tiny moments throughout the day, throughout your PhD that pop up and you worry about, you do have to just ask yourself, is it in my control? And if not, it starts to get easier just to let it go. And then you can focus your attention onto something that will actually make a difference because it is within your sphere of influence. When I was in the thick of my PhD, the last thing I wanted to hear was take a break. It is cringy because all you want to do is just get going, but learning to take breaks completely guilt-free is very important and it's something that not only will help boost your creativity, but will just help you enjoy the process as well. And it's as simple as finding an activity outside of your PhD that you can sort of enter that flow state, at least that's the best way I've been able to enter a relaxation state, and that is finding a hobby. Sometimes it's like sewing clothes, I like to do that. Sometimes it's painting, sometimes it's doing charcoal portraits, sometimes it's just hanging out with friends. But taking a break and realizing that it will make you better in the long run is so very important, especially when you've got YouTube channels that are completely about productivity, doing things all the time, getting the most out of your time. It can be easily swept up into thinking that you need to also be doing that. You don't, take afternoons, take evenings, take weekends, take a whole week if you need to, because refreshing yourself will make everything better. So there we have it, there are all of the cringe-worthy bits of advice I have been given over the years that I think actually work. So let me know in the comments which ones you would add, and also remember there are more ways you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. Head over to andrewstapleton.com.au forward slash newsletter, the link is in the description, and when you sign up you'll get five emails over about two weeks, everything from the tools I've used, the podcast I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract, and more. It's exclusive content available for free, so go sign up now. And also head over to academiainsider.com, that's my project where I've got my e-books, the Ultimate Academic Writing Toolkit, as well as the PhD Survival Guide. I've got my resource pack for applying for a PhD and grad school there as well. I've also got the blog and the forum, it's all there to make sure that academia and your PhD works for you, and I'd love for you to go and take a look. All right then, I'll see you in the next video.