Tomorrow is the best time to start building your confidence for the viva – assuming you didn’t do it yesterday and you’re busy today.
Tomorrow, take five minutes to write down a few thoughts about something that you’ve achieved in the course of your PhD. Capture a result, an idea, a paper, a chapter, a skill that you’ve developed, a knowledge-based competence – something you’ve done that has helped you get to where you are.
And keep going every day. Five minutes of reflection every day, building up a short story collection of the last few years. A collection of little story fragments that point to you being good at what you do. A story that, when combined, shows you can be confident you’re ready for your viva.
