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Nathan

“All The Ideas”

Daily Post

Every thesis is “incomplete” in the sense that no book could possibly contain everything you did, read, thought and considered during your PhD journey. Your thesis just can’t contain it all.

It also doesn’t need to. Consider that what you leave out shows your awareness, curation, style – your expertise, if you like. Your thesis is an expression of your capability as a researcher as much as a summary of the research you did and what it means.

If it helps, use this short summary exercise to think through some of the ideas in your work:

  • Take a sheet of paper and divide it into four parts.
  • In the first part, list five results or conclusions you think are valuable. Add a few keywords for each.
  • In the second part, write down five things you did well during your PhD. These could be projects, tasks or skills you developed.
  • In the third part, list five papers you believe supported your work well. Add a few keywords for each of these.
  • In the fourth part, list five things you left out of your thesis and a few keywords for each that expresses why.

Finally, think a little about what all this means.

Your thesis doesn’t show everything you did.

Recognise that what it does have means a lot more than what it doesn’t.

 

PS: if you’re looking for more viva help then check out The Examiners Issue, the 11th issue of Viva Survivors Select, freshly released yesterday! Twenty posts from the blog covering examiners from lots of perspectives and two new pages of ideas 🙂

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

SCAMPERing Through Your Thesis

Daily Post

I like acronyms as useful tools, particularly for unpicking things or prompting thoughts. Last year I shared a post on how to use the tool SCAMPER to think about how to extend the research you’ve done for your PhD. Recently it struck me that SCAMPER could be useful as a reflection and review tool.

Today’s post is a series of questions inspired by SCAMPER to get you reflecting about your research. Use these with journalling or free-writing to spark some thoughts about your thesis.

  • Substitute: what did you change from something someone else had done?
  • Combine: what ideas did you bring together in your thesis?
  • Adapt: how have you altered the approach that you started with?
  • Magnify: what areas did you decide to focus on?
  • Put to other use: what pre-existing tools or ideas did you use?
  • Eliminate: how did you simplify things as your work developed?
  • Rearrange: as your thesis was nearing completion, what changes did you have to make?

Use these questions to think about your research and thesis. Reflecting on the three or more years of work you’ve completed is an essential part of the viva prep process.

Nathan

GROWing a Plan

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I was reminded earlier this month of the coaching tool GROW, and how useful it can be to start conversations that help people change.

  • Goal: what is it you want?
  • Reality: where are you now?
  • Options: what could you do?
  • Will: what will you do?

When I heard this again a little thought started to form about the kinds of questions that relate to these words. I was at a three-day workshop on leadership, and as my friend described GROW to the participants it struck me that this could also be a neat framework to help someone prepare for their viva.

  • Goal: what does prepared look like for you? What are you working towards?
  • Reality: how much time will you have available? Who could help you?
  • Options: given your resources, what could you do to be ready? And what do you not have time for?
  • Will: how are you going to make time for what you need to do? When will you get the work done?

A short, four-step sequence for figuring out options or a plan for viva prep. There’s no sense in making a plan that won’t work for you.

It doesn’t need to take long to get to work.

Nathan

Best of Viva Survivors 2017: Acronyms & Tools

Daily Post

I’m rounding 2017 off with five days of link sharing for five different areas I’ve posted on this year. Today the focus is on acronyms and thinking tools that I think could be really useful for viva prep or thinking about your research. I love these sorts of concepts that try to help with clear thinking or providing structure. Take a look and see what you think.

Acronyms are like beautiful little bundles of help. Thinking tools can give frameworks to help direct your thinking. To my mind, both perfect places to look for viva help!

Found another post that you think is awesome? Let me know! And please share my best of 2017 posts with anyone who might need them. Retweets are always welcome!

Nathan

The Simple Life

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Long-term readers will know that I’m a fan of acronyms as valuable tools for encapsulating useful ideas. You can see some examples here, here and here of how I think they can be applied to help with the viva.

KISS is an odd one! Not a means to remember a cool tool or a structure to build around. Rather it’s a reminder that can help with viva prep and the viva, and of course to much of life:

Keep It Simple, Stupid

There’s a place for the complex and complicated in research, of course, but don’t jump to the most complex expression: simplify first. Don’t worry about the optimal way to mark up a thesis: start with a few small things to help yourself. Don’t focus on “what if” questions you may never have to face: find opportunities that will help you practise talk and answer questions.

You’re not stupid. Start simple.

Nathan

A Good INTRO

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I used to be petrified of public speaking. I would only give talks during my PhD when I absolutely had to. I was always concerned that I would forget something, make a mistake or be asked a question for which I had no answer. I was even nervous about being too nervous!

Then I started a business where I had to present all of the time. My fears went partly because of regularly being in situations where I had to present, but also because I went out of my way to explore ways to give talks. I liked to find out about how to structure talks, particularly the beginnings. I knew that if I could get that right I’d feel good about the rest of the presentation, whether it was ten minutes or two hours.

A few years ago, my good friend Dr Aimee Blackledge shared an effective tool for starting talks with me. The tool is, fittingly, called INTRO and is an acronym to provide structure for the start of a presentation:

  • Interest: start by sharing something that will grab the audience’s attention, a fact, an image, a joke.
  • Need: say why what you’re going to talk about is important. Why does it need to be addressed?
  • Title: share the title of the talk.
  • Range: say something about how long you’ll speak for, what you might cover and how you want to handle questions.
  • Objective: close your introduction by sharing what your goal is with speaking. Is there something you want the audience to do as a result?

I really like how it helps start things off but also leads to a good overview. There’s a nice logic to it, and done well it can be a great start to a presentation. I think the five prompts also give a great format to create a summary of your research when it’s time to prepare for the viva.

  • Interest: how did you become interested in your field of research?
  • Need: what need does your thesis address?
  • Title: what is your thesis’ title, and why?
  • Range: what does your thesis cover?
  • Objective: what do you hope that someone would know, think or do after reading it?

Give INTRO a try when you next prepare a talk, see if it helps. Try it too when your viva is on the way to help break down what your work is all about.

Nathan

Plus, Minus, Interesting

Daily Post

I like to use thinking tools, and “Plus, Minus, Interesting” is a good concept by Edward de Bono. To put it simply, it’s just a request to look at things from different perspectives: look for positives, negatives and interesting features, don’t just examine something with whatever gut feeling you have.

I can think of lots of ways to use it when preparing for the viva:

  • Explore the methodology you used to do your research. Why was it good to do it the way that you did? What did it not allow you to do? What’s interesting about it?
  • If you find a passage that is unclear, use “plus, minus, interesting” to reframe the vague text.
  • Create a summary for each chapter, a single page divided into three sections. Plus for important things, minus for difficult parts, interesting for things that others might find, erm, interesting.
  • Use “plus, minus, interesting” to provoke an analysis or discussion of the main outcomes of your thesis.

This is just one flexible tool. There are others! Use what you can to explore your research in new ways. It’s good prep to think differently about your thesis before the viva.

Nathan

Colour Your Thinking

Daily Post

I’m a fan of Edward de Bono, and I love his Six Thinking Hats concept. It’s a way to manage discussions or problem solving. You can check out the details if you like; in short, you can imagine people putting on coloured hats to drive different kinds of thinking or observations. This stops people taking over with a particular agenda and prevents a certain emphasis being put on discussion.

Six Thinking Hats is a useful solo review tool for your thesis too. As each colour of hat corresponds to a certain kind of thinking you can explore your research in a different and useful way. For example, you might make some notes about a chapter in the following sequence of thinking:

  • White Hat: what is this chapter about?
  • Blue Hat: what process or method drives it forward?
  • Red Hat: how do you feel about the material in it?
  • Yellow Hat: what is good about this chapter?
  • Black Hat: what could be better?
  • Green Hat: where are the opportunities to build on this work?

If different coloured hats sounds silly, just take these six questions in sequence as a way to unpick some thoughts about your thesis!

Nathan

Going Further

Daily Post

I like creative thinking tools. (see previously!) I’m also intrigued by people who write up their thesis but have clear ideas for what they would do next. I didn’t have that at all. The most I could see was perhaps learning C++ to code a few algorithms, but apart from that I didn’t know what I could do next to take my research further.

Fortunately, I have a creative thinking tool for that: SCAMPER, an acronym of ways to innovate. Each letter is a different prompt for re-examining an idea or solution. There are lots of ways it can be used, but I think for the purposes of thinking how to develop research it is useful just to take each prompt at face value. If you’re thinking around your research area as part of your viva prep, the following could help.

  • Substitute: what could you change in your current research to get something valuable?
  • Combine: how could you blend your research with something else to find something innovative?
  • Adapt: is it possible to adapt a process or method you’ve already used successfully for something else?
  • Magnify: can you find something valuable by emphasising aspects of your prior research?
  • Put to other use: can you apply what you’ve done in another context?
  • Eliminate: how could you get an interesting result by removing aspects of your existing research or process?
  • Rearrange: how can you take what you’ve already done and remix to find something great?

Your examiners might not ask about future directions that your research could go in. An exercise like this can help lead you to interesting ideas, and it won’t hurt you to have more of them, will it?

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