Transcript of Episode:
Welcome to "Office Hours with Dr. Lacy". Hi, I'm Dr. Lacy, your Dissertation Strategist, where I help doctoral students finish their qualitative dissertations so that they can graduate and successfully become Doctor. Let's get started with this week's episode. Guess what? I am hosting my very first writing retreat in November. It's gonna be at home in Chicago and I'm inviting a few friends along for a beautiful, productive, rejuvenating writing retreat right before the holiday. So we are going to meet meeting in Chicago November 24th so this one is seven, four days, three nights of writing, scholarly pursuits, whatever that may be. Fun we are going to be talking about, so like for your scholarly self we're going to be talking about best ways of organizing yourself, how to make a realistic schedule and a realistic routes mean you're going to have some time to get some eyes and your writings.
It really help you flesh out those ideas. Have a really solid plan for not only getting a significant rise in bed at the retreat. So cause there was nothing more I find annoying that we go to in the Bay. You're out, you're all excited and you're motivated and you're like, get them to do all the things and then you go home and you're like, I don't even know how to take the next step. So we're going to make sure that when you leave, you know what to do. Plus, you know, I don't like, I can't just sit there and just work, you know, that's not my emo. So while we will have 20 hours dedicated to solid writing time, we will also have time to talk about things that are happening outside of writing. Like how do you keep your motivation, how do you stay productive, how do you manage your chair and your committee and keep everybody on schedule and on the same page, how do you manage your own selves to that, you know, you can continue to show up and go after your doubles. Plus so much more. Breakfast and lunch is included in the price and we have three different options for packages available. So please, please, please go over to marvettelacy.com. Either you're going to click the red button at the top right corner and it says work with me. And there you will find all the information about the writing retreat. I'm so excited. I have so many surprises
And we already have people signed up and so please don't miss out. I would hate for you to miss out. Just gone over to the website or you can DM me on Instagram and we can talk there and I can tell you more about it, but please don't miss out. All right, we're going to get onto today's episode. Oh, okay. Welcome back to week three. [inaudible] I'm going to try to make this fast because I'm not feeling well and my congestion and starting to overtake my throat and everything. But this week, which is a perfect segue this week is about execution, is the name of the game. And I said it's a perfect segue because I don't feel good and I just want to go lay back down cause I think I tried to do too much today. But I said I was wanting to do these episodes and it's about executing.
And I know that this is going to be a few minutes. And then I get to lay down after that and I get to keep the, with my words and myself. And that's really what I want to talk about today, about the, like many of us are great at making plans and I'm saying all the things that we want to do and daydreaming about that and you know, scheduling it down in our paper planner and all I'm planning is like how exactly we're going to do it and how much time we're gonna spend on it. And then we don't put that same energy into executing, to showing up day after day when it gets difficult or tedious. We don't put the same energy into it and we don't execute. And that is a difference between people who have PhDs and people who don't. Are you executing? Like the people who give up, they didn't execute.
And so [inaudible] we're going to be talking about how to execute today. I was thinking back when I was working on my dissertation and how I got really into planners. I'm not quite sure all the way how I got there. I think I saw one video on YouTube and then it went, it went down a rabbit hole and then I had a friend who was also into planners and we just got so into it. I think she, I mean she's still into it. I don't think it's the same as it was when we were writing dissertations. But we would like, I mean at least three, four times a week, I'm not exaggerating. We would go to like Michael's or Joanne's and buy all the planner supplies. I had so many planners, I had a planner for like writing my like dissertation. I had a planner for working out.
I had a planner for class cause I was sick like one or two classes. I had a planner for self care and I even at one point I think I had a planner for like what my future life would look like cause I was about, I was about other things and I would decorate all of these planners each Sunday got to the, I'm side recording YouTube videos about it, but I'm, I would decorate it like full washi tape full of stickers. Cause you know me, it's not even, I can't do it a little bit. I didn't do any all the way. And I would do that. Like I'll spend hours decorating my planner. It was just like for me, it was my way of having stuff cares what I thought and plus what's happening. Say, organize, right? Yeah. W I was spending all this time making this pretty planned for the league and how's going get all these things done in different areas of my life.
I also had like a business planning, cause I was starting a business in the middle of a dissertation. Who does that? I do. Well I had all these ideas of black clothes. I was gonna write everything in hours and hours on Sunday, only to get to Friday and Saturday and realize I may have done 25%, if that of what I said I was going to do. And so then I would feel like a failure. I feel like yeah. Bottom of like that's inappropriate. I would feel like yeah, like I just didn't do, I gave up. I didn't do it enough. All right. I took the easy way out. And then I would go and, and recommit myself for the next week and spend another three hours on Sunday. And like this week I'm serious. And you know, I created a whole cycle after psycho.
And y'all, that's not true. And the funny part, I do like know that next week, so at the time of this recording, the following, we're in October and the following week I'm letting to be going to Austin, Texas with my sister in law to go to the Aaron Condron headquarters in Kadra. It makes the life planners kind of like one of the original, not original, but like one of the main people are the first people to really get big in this planner world and these planners can, I don't know, I felt like they range from like 50 to like all the way up to like two, $300, like depending on how you customize it and what you get. But anyway let's just, and I was really excited. I said I'm going to go with her to see it and I'm going to record it because I'm just really curious. But anyway, I'll let you know how it goes. Anyway, bags of my plan and story.
Hey girl, the ones that come in the middle of this episode until you about my 90 day challenge. Yes. The last 90 days. How do we finish this year strong? So if you're familiar or Rachel Hollis, she does the last 90 days challenge and I decided to do my own version of that. And so I'm here to have all of my scholar friends make the last 90 days the best 90 days of 2019 all you have to do is come on over to the website, my bet at Lacey's dot com. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and you will see a button there for you to sign up. There should also be a button at the top of the page, but just in case you don't see it, it's there. And you are, you're on a sign up and you're going to get emails.
And what I'm doing is sitting folks, an email every week full of motivation and a challenge for them to do every week in this challenge takes no time. Like it's asking you to take an hour for yourself in. Listen, if you don't have it, Howard, a day for yourself, like Rachel says, do you even have a life? So yes, that's where we're going to be doing for the 90 days. It's not too late to sign up. It's never too late to start going towards your dream. So please come on over to the website, sign up and let's get back to the episode.
I mean, I spent so much money on stickers and washy and when I moved from Georgia after I graduated, I had at least three boxes, like large boxes. We're talking of planner stuff and supplies. And that was just ridiculous. And it wasn't until I transition into my job in Milwaukee that I realized I was using all of this planners stuff. As a form of procrastination. Like in my mind I thought I was doing something to help me be more productive and work smarter and to use the, I have the best use of my time to save you time in the end. But really it just ended up being hours and hours of procrastination. Me spending money I did not have on stuff that I did and I need. And it wasn't until I started doing things and executed on things that I saw a change in my level of productivity, a change in my wallet, a change in like the amount of time I had.
And
I also had to like stop at one point and just work. So I was a executing his wife finished that dissertation of four months executing and that's why I was able to grow my business so quickly and is best two years because they became stop planning and start doing sure you need a plan because you need to know that the direction you're going in. But there's no way you can figure that out in your head. You cannot account for everything that's going to happen and how that plan is going to need to change and shift or how life is going to come at you because you can't do the future. And so at some point you just got to do it some point you just got to start. So how do you execute? First you have to make the decision that you're going to do whatever the thing is.
So if your goal is I'm graduating in may, make the decision and be done with it, stop going back and forth about a chapter in may or should I aim sorry about that. Should I do it in may or should I do it in August or maybe I December, I don't know. Let me go ask someone and stuff. Let me go talk to 10,000 people about it. No, make a decision, make a decision and try it on for 30 days and then evaluate to see how that's going. But you gone back and forth and spending all this time, it's you indulging in this indecision because you don't want to do the actual hard work that it takes to actually do the thing. So the first thing is to make the decision and stop saying things like, it's saving me time or I'm saving myself on the backend.
You're not, you're wasting time. That's what you're doing. So make the decision is the first thing. The second thing is your top three. We're going back to the basics here every day you should have a top three. I would go further to say you should have a top three for the week and a top three for the month and even it's after for the year, but at the very least every day, top three, top three cause especially the times when I'm like, I just don't feel like it. I'm tired today when I wake up I have to do my top three. These are three things I'm getting done. It guides you, it gives you a clear plan of this is what you need to do. And when you finish those types of three things, you feel so accomplished and everything else is just icing on the cake and you just had three.
Each items should take less than 20 minutes to do. So we're really talking about an hour of your day to do these things. And listen sometimes on my top three is to take a shower, brush my teeth and drink my water. We're not trying to like, you know, I dunno, reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it is that simple. Now. Other days it's more productively not per Deb because I feel like brushing your teeth is protective, but you get what I'm saying like some days is more complex things I should say, but having a top three. So first make a decision. Second habit top three. The third thing is your morning routine. Your success is in your routine. So if you're in this Langley day challenge, follow the basics in the morning. That's your morning routine and the basics are you wake up, you have an hour for yourself.
That's your routine. You drink at least 64 ounces of water. You move for 10 minutes, you write for 10 minutes and you write your top three. That should take you about an hour or less. But if you don't have an hour for yourself, that's, that's ridiculous. Rachel, how this is like you don't have a hour for yourself. You don't have a life. I believe that an hour for yourself, your morning routine, if you start your day off giving to yourself everything else, it puts everything else in perspective. Everything else will get that. Everything else will fall into place. You not at you has your back enough in that day to give yourself an hour to set yourself up properly so that you can face today and things are not just happening to you that you're more intentional about what's going on in your day. And then the fourth thing is you have to evaluate your progress.
What you measure grows. Isn't that the saying or something like that. And we're talking about something really simple. So at the end of the day, and if you have my daily planning sheets, then you would do this too. But essentially if you don't, you just wanna at the end of the year, end of your day or at the next day, during your morning routine, you want to ask yourself, what did I say I was wanting to do? Which is your top three? Did I do what I say I would do? Did you do your top three? Why or why not? And then what can I do differently tomorrow or next week or next year depending on when you're doing this, this evaluation, because you should be evaluating every day, every week, every month, every year. But at the minimum, evaluating your day, what did you say you were going to do? Did you do what you say you were going to do and what can you do differently the next day?
Answering those questions, we're talking two to five minutes, but it makes all the difference in, holds you accountable to yourself. It helps you to start to see things or areas where you may need a little bit more assistance in and you can go ask for help for the thing you actually need help with instead of vomiting words on to someone and they have to try to figure out what it is that you need help with. This helps keep you organized. And then the fifth thing is to rest and repeat. Taking some time for yourself. Yes, but not too long, but going back up. So the first thing of making the decision, writing out your top three, doing your morning routine and evaluating your progress, doing this every day, day in and day out, we'll take you so much further than you try and sit down and liking, getting the washy tape out and the stickers and all the planners and like what needs to go here and what needs to go there. Keep it simple.
What is it that you want to do? Make decision to do it right. Your top three every day to get you closer to that. Go have a morning routine, evaluate your progress, rest and repeat. And that is all because I used to buy chest is like on fire. So if you need this and that printable sign up for the 90 day challenge and that will come to your inbox. Be curious to know what your thoughts are about today's episode. You can let me know on Instagram, mr Lacy or in the Facebook group, cos scholars. And then yeah, I'll be hanging out with the people in you. And yet that is it for today. I'm going to go yeah, because I'm all over the place. Do something to show yourself some love and until next time I will talk to you later. Bye for now.
Hey SIS, how is your productivity going? No, for real. It's just you. I mean like tell me how is your productivity going? You feel like you're getting a lot done in a week or do you feel like you're just doing a lot in a lie and you're feeling burnt out? Still a little bit lonely, wishing you had people who were just as dedicated as you are and the assistant as you are to showing up week after week to get things done. Then you have to join right away. Right away is my weekly accountability group where we had people just like you showing up every week to get it done. We meet on Sundays and Wednesdays are three hours each. You can choose to come either Sunday or Wednesday or both. You can come in for some time. We ask that people stay for the whole time, but we also know like life is real, life happens and sometimes you have other things to do.
And so we have people who come in for maybe the first 30 minutes and then they leave when they come back. It is there for you. It is there as a community of people to encourage you to support you. It is there to keep you accountable to what you say you're going to do week after week in class. We are always like holding each other down. We are supporting each other. We celebrate the small wins that like your family and friends don't get. Like I don't understand why it might have been exciting for you to find the perfect methodology or that perfect article that explains exactly what it is that you want to do for your dissertation. That's not us. We do that. Well you, we're here to celebrate with you and then when you need someone to help keep you together, like call you to the carpet. We're there to, to do that. So come to the website, check us out. Enjoy. Now. you can go to my vet, like see back, calm. Click the red button in the top right corner, work with me, and you'll find all the information that you need there. I love this group. We've been going for almost a year now. You definitely, definitely should join.