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Tag: plan your prep

Nathan

Finishing

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Viva prep is personal and purposeful. Make a plan that works for you, meets your needs and aligns with your situation.

Don’t cram: plan. Don’t squeeze everything in but allow time to do the work and allow space for adjustments. Leave room for changes so that you don’t make space for stress.

Decide what work you will do last. What final tasks might help you as you get within days of your viva? Will they be big or small? Will they be focussed on a particular aspect of your research or a more general final work?

How you finish your prep is as important as how you start. Finish your prep well. Decide in advance what you want to feel like or be doing and then you can plan a route to getting there.

Nathan

Thinking Spaces

Daily Post

In the same way that editing your thesis has to be approached differently to writing your first draft, preparing for your viva needs a different process to how you might typically do work. A different space could support that very well.

If you had the choice, where would be a good space for you to get ready? Where could you think?

Will you work from home or go to the library? Would a few hours in a cafe be more helpful than your desk? And will you use different spaces for different tasks? You might prefer to curl up on a sofa to read your thesis but need a flat surface somewhere to annotate your thesis.

Viva prep requires some doing to support your thinking. Where will help you most as you do the work?

Nathan

Viva Prep: Need, No & Nice

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A helpful tool I use to wade through work on my to do list is to remember need, no, nice.

  • Need describes all the things that I have to do. This could be time-critical tasks or long-term slow progress work.
  • No is for all of the things on my work radar that are not going to be done, at least for now. It could be an idea I have that isn’t right yet (and might not be right ever).
  • Nice is for the things that sit somewhere in-between. Not essential or needed but also with value to be done if I have time.

These three words help me categorise all the tasks and projects I have on my mind.

 

There are lots of ideas of what good viva prep could include and also lots of thoughts of things that would help. How do you work through what you have to do?

  • Start your prep by identifying the things you need: not just what someone tells you, but what you really feel you have to get done.
  • Figure out the things that are a no for you: maybe you don’t need to read up on your examiners because you know about them already.
  • Decide if anything would be nice: a cool idea for viva prep is to give a seminar to friends and take questions, but it’s not essential prep.

When you set out to plan your prep and have a lot of options you can use these three words to cut your work down and into an appropriate shape for the weeks ahead.

 

PS: I’ll explore how to plan viva prep at my Viva Survivor webinar on Wednesday 3rd December 2025. I’ve shared Viva Survivor more than 420 times: it is my comprehensive live session on getting ready for the viva, attendees get access to a catch-up recording and some of my publications too! Check the link for full details of what to expect from the live webinar.

Nathan

Where Is Your Focus?

Daily Post

Where are you giving your attention when you plan your viva prep?

You don’t have to do everything all at once. You don’t have to do what everyone else does.

It might be a good idea to summarise the content of each chapter in your thesis – but equally you could focus on the contribution of your thesis as a whole. Either way could work well to get you reviewing and reflecting.

Having a mock viva is a good general preparation idea – but it might be even more helpful for you to explore different ways of explaining key parts of your research to friends or in a presentation.

Be mindful of your focus as you get ready. Are you doing what you need to do to get ready?

Nathan

Change For Your Prep

Daily Post

There might be a certain logic to do some of your viva prep in a different space to where you would typically work.

A different space allows you to think away from your typical environment. Maybe working at a different time could give you a new insight into how you work or what you’ve done well. Working in a different way (writing longhand rather than typing) might change the pace of your observations or the way you think about things.

Viva prep could be a really good time for changing things up as you get ready for your viva.

Nathan

Two Step Viva Prep

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Step One: Make lists.

Step Two: Do the work.

Viva prep involves a fair amount of work, reflection, planning and time – but you don’t need to make it complicated.

 

PS: one more helpful viva prep step would be to subscribe to the Viva Survivors blog and get a new helpful post emailed to you every day!

Nathan

Unpacking & Reframing

Daily Post

Summaries are a helpful viva prep tool.

A good summary could help you to unpack ideas. You can take out, examine and remind yourself of what something is, why it helps and what it’s for.

A good summary could allow you to reframe your work. You can find a new perspective by taking a particular focus or by examining a specific aspect of what you’ve done.

Summaries allow you to think ahead. The information can be the foundations of responses in the viva. You wouldn’t be expected to read from summaries in the viva but they can help you to rehearse what points really matter.

Unpack your ideas. Reframe your thinking. Use summary creation as a useful part of your viva prep toolkit.

Nathan

Building A Bridge

Daily Post

Public domain image of a small wooden bridge that crosses a stream between two close banks.

Viva prep is like building a bridge between where you are when you submit your thesis and where you need to be for your viva.

But the gap is not that wide. The bridge does not have to be that complicated.

Why take the chance that you might stumble when preparation is not much work compared to all the work you’ve done before?

 

PS: Viva prep is one of the big topics of my Viva Survivor webinar which is running on Wednesday 3rd December 2025. I’ve shared this session more than 400 times and it is my comprehensive live session on getting ready for the viva. Check the link for full details of what to expect from the webinar!

Nathan

Solving Viva Prep

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If 20 to 30 hours of viva prep is about right for most candidates then depending on someone’s plans that might mean:

  • 1 or 2 hours of viva prep every day over the course of two weeks;
  • 30 mins to 1 hour of viva prep most days over the course of a month;
  • At least 3 hours of viva prep every day if there is just one week left.

The last option is probably not desirable or helpful!

The other two could work and more generally you can find a solution for viva prep simply by thinking about your circumstances, needs and preferences.

How much time do you have? What pressures constrain you? How do you like to work?

Reflect on those questions and compare the timings above. Then you can start to think about how you might plan your viva prep in a kind and sustainable way for yourself.

Nathan

Viva Prep Recipes

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I do a lot of the cooking in our house. Most of what I make regularly is the result of recipes I carry in my head but I sometimes look in cookbooks to check my instincts around cooking times, temperatures and good ingredient pairings.

It also helps me to figure out alternatives too. Will this dish still work if I change the seasoning? Probably. Can I swap tomatoes for carrots? Maybe not. And what do I do if I need to make a big change from the process described?

 

Viva prep feels a lot like this too. There are a lot of good ideas for how to get ready but you have to find something that feels right for you and tweak it from there.

A mock viva is often held around two weeks before the viva date but a week before your viva or a month before could work too with a few adjustments.

It’s common to start viva prep by reading your thesis but journalling or making other notes is equally helpful and valid.

Ask around to find out what others did. Read blog posts for good ideas. Then assemble your own recipe for viva prep success.

 

PS: I released the latest edition of Viva Survivors Select this week. As with today’s post The Confidence Issue has lots of practical ideas from the Viva Survivors archive for building confidence for the viva!

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