The PhD Life Coach

Vikki Wright
  • 5.0 (13)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

Whether you're a PhD student or an experienced academic, life in a university can be tough. If you're feeling overwhelmed, undervalued, or out of your depth, the PhD Life Coach can help. We talk about issues that affect all academics and how we can feel better now, without having to be perfect productivity machines. We usually do this career because we love it, so let's remember what that feels like! I'm your host, Dr Vikki Wright. Join my newsletter at www.thephdlifecoach.com.

  1. 3d ago

    4.69 GREATEST HITS - How to manage negative feedback

    Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! When did you last get some negative feedback? As PhD students and academics, we get negative feedback quite often, either comments on drafts of papers, rejections from journals, applying for jobs, all sorts of things. We get bits of negative feedback and it can really hurt. So what do we do when we experience negative feedback? What do we do with the fact it hurts and how could we perhaps do something different in the future? That's what we're going to be talking about in today's podcast. If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on What to do when you get contradictory advice **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464 I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

  2. 5d ago

    4.68 GREATEST HITS - Why you should notice the paradox of imposter syndrome

    Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Imposter syndrome often affects the most high achieving people yet it can still feel so true that you’re “not good enough” and “conning” other people into believing you’re better than you are. In this episode, I discuss a paradox that I see a lot in academics experiencing imposter syndrome - the tendency to simultaneously believe that you are an imposter AND hold yourself to higher standards than you hold other people. I’ll discuss the five past experiences that may influence why you have these paradoxical beliefs and why recognising this can be the first step to overcoming some of these imposterish thoughts.   If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on What the Celebrity Traitors taught me about imposter syndrome **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464 I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

  3. Sep 23

    4.67 GREATEST HITS - How to manage your energy

    Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! How many times have you seen or been on a time management course? How many books and podcasts and blogs and social media posts have you seen about time management?  I want you to compare that to how many times you've seen courses and support for energy management. So much less. It's so rare to see people discussing energy management compared to how often we see people talking about time management, and it just doesn't make sense because time passes. We can organize our tasks within time, but we can never manage time itself. It's the one commodity we have very little control over. But that's okay. Because actually time management is rarely the issue. Our issues are usually around energy management and focus management, yet there's much less support out there for this. So that's why I'm recording this podcast. If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on doing a PhD with a chronic illness, with special guest Krystina François. **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464 I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

  4. Sep 21

    4.66 GREATEST HITS - Why you deserve a life outside academia

    Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! It's so easy to believe that you don't have time for a life outside of academia. The pressure and the never-ending to-do lists mean that even having fun feels like one more thing you need to fit in. In this episode I talk about the benefits of having hobbies outside of academia, including how I found myself hanging by my ankles being rescued by people half my age. I also talk about how you can coach yourself to believe that you deserve that time to yourself.  If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on protecting your mental health during your PhD with Dr Marissa Edwards. **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464 I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

  5. Sep 16

    4.65 GREATEST HITS - How to use a Do Know Don't Know list

    Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! One of the things I hear clients say most often is that they don't know what to do. They either don't know what decision to make in their life, they don't know how to do something, they don't know how to present their argument, how to structure their paper, they don't know which study to do, they don't know, they don't know, they don't know. It comes up all the time at every level of the academic journey, whether you're a PhD student or a full professor. This idea that we don't know something and that that is a problem can really cause a lot of delays. It's a huge source of procrastination. If you've written something in your kind of task list for the day and you get to it and you're like, yeah, I'm not really sure how to do that, it's really easy to decide, oh, I'll do it later. It's really easy to put off because you're putting off something that's kind of a bit nebulous anyway. This is something I've addressed with some of my one to one clients recently, and lots of them have had success with a really specific tool that I like to call the do know don't know list, which I'm going to share with you today. If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on What to do when you don’t know what to do **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464 I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

  6. Sep 14

    4.64 GREATEST HITS - What to do if you already feel behind

    Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! In this episode, I talk about feeling behind! It's easy to spend a lot of time telling yourself that you're behind your own plan or you're behind other people. Neither feel good and neither help us make more progress.  I'll talk through why these sort of thoughts hold us back and give some ideas about what to do instead. None of this needs us to be a super human - the tips are simple and achieveable, and help us move towards our goals with less pain.  If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on How to get ahead when you’re feeling behind, with best selling author (and friend of the podcast!) Sophie Hannah.  **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464 I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

  7. Sep 9

    4.63 GREATEST HITS - Eight ways you’re secretly procrastinating

    Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Procrastinating is when we scroll social media instead of working, right? No! Procrastination is anything that we do to avoid the emotions associated with doing the task we intend to do. In this episode, I will share eight things that I think are often used as procrastination and help you figure out what to do if you recognise yourself in this! I suspect we all will...  If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on why you don’t need another planner! **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464 I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

  8. Sep 7

    4.62 GREATEST HITS - How to work out why you procrastinate

    Send Vikki any questions you'd like answered on the show! Pretty much every PhD student struggles with procrastination yet the advice is often very generic. In this episode, I talk about a theoretical framework that helps us better understand why each of us, as individuals, procrastinate so that we can make more tailored plans to support ourselves. I also explain why it’s totally understandable that you procrastinate and why we know it’s a modifiable behaviour – i.e. you can change!  **** I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464 I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

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5
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Whether you're a PhD student or an experienced academic, life in a university can be tough. If you're feeling overwhelmed, undervalued, or out of your depth, the PhD Life Coach can help. We talk about issues that affect all academics and how we can feel better now, without having to be perfect productivity machines. We usually do this career because we love it, so let's remember what that feels like! I'm your host, Dr Vikki Wright. Join my newsletter at www.thephdlifecoach.com.

Information

  • Creator
    Vikki Wright
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    208
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The PhD Life Coach
  • Show Website
    The PhD Life Coach

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