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Nathan

The Prep Before Prep

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Viva prep starts after submission. The focus for your work before then has to be on finishing your research, your thesis and thinking ahead for life after the PhD. The weeks between submission and your viva date are enough to get ready for the particular challenge of your viva.

However, while your focus has to rest elsewhere, there are several key actions you can take to make sure that you’re ready to work when it’s viva prep time. Before you get to submission:

  • Make sure you have checked the current regulations for vivas at your university. Don’t rely on tips or advice from friends when it comes to the rules.
  • Make sure you have talked with your supervisors about your potential examiners. They might ask for your suggestions or simply tell you who they’re thinking about and why.
  • Take time to think about the period between submission and the viva. You don’t need a plan at this stage but you need to be ready to plan, aware of any important dates or situations that you need to account for.

There’s a little prep before your viva prep. It is a small amount of work that helps the rest of it come together well.

Nathan

Crunch

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I don’t like work crunch. I avoid it if I can help it. Planning helps me:

  • I have a work diary.
  • I have a handwritten page in my notebook that shows me three months ahead.
  • And I make weekly task sheets that show me what I’m doing when.
  • And I have a spreadsheet on my computer.

And we have a big flipchart-sized calendar on our living room wall to help me keep track!

I’m not forgetful per se – this all helps me to remember. It helps me to see ahead and avoid periods when I have to do more than I’m comfortable with.

I don’t like work stress. I don’t like crunch periods.

But sometimes it comes anyway. It could be the forgotten task. The advanced deadline. The family thing I need to do that dominoes into a time I thought I could write.

Then crunch crunch crunch…

 

It’s possible that my general viva advice about sketching out a plan (or two) for viva prep comes from some of my biases about avoiding crunch and stress!

I don’t think that makes it bad advice though.

When you’re planning your viva prep it is a good idea to do what you can to avoid stress while you work. There will be enough viva feelings floating about that it’s good to keep stress out of the mix. It’s good to make a plan so that when other things come along – and they will! – you can do what you can to minimise feeling that you have to crunch through your viva prep.

How can you organise yourself to make sure you are on top of all of your viva prep tasks?

How will you make a plan that keeps you on track but is flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances?

And, maybe the first question to think about, how do you deal with crunch periods when they come?

Nathan

One Task Per Day

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Working at this scale could be enough to get ready for your viva.

I don’t mean “one small thing per day”! A task could be reading your thesis for an hour. A task could be making notes on three or four important papers. A mock viva is a task!

But if you did one thing every day after submission then you would be in good shape for your viva. If you show up as you’ve done for the rest of your PhD, on good days and bad, still determined to get things done then you’d be working well.

You need to rest too. I’m not advocating working for hours on end every day. But if you made a choice to show up and do a little work each day think about how ready you could be by your viva date.

Nathan

Number Problems

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Your PhD success is not directly measured by big numbers.

It’s not in the thousands of words in your thesis. It doesn’t correlate with the number of papers you’ve read or the number you’ve cited. You don’t need a heroic number of hours invested into mastering a skill. You don’t need to do more than the last person.

The numbers that really help may sound similar but they help in different ways.

  • The number of papers you’ve read helps you know what you need to know.
  • Take confidence from knowing you have written 200 good pages not for simply having 200 pages.
  • You’ve invested thousands of hours to show your determination and express your ability – you’ve not simply done a lot.

Bigger alone isn’t better. Recognise the value of the numbers that matter to your PhD.

Nathan

Clear Questions Get Better Responses

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This sentiment applies in life, work and the viva!

Clear requests for prep help from friends and supervisors are more likely to get a helpful response.

Clear questions from your examiners (and you) will help drive good discussion at your viva.

Clear follow-up questions will allow you to dig deeper – and questions for clarity from you, if you need to ask, will only make the viva conversation better.

Take your time, choose your words carefully and be as clear as possible at your viva and during prep.

Nathan

Intro & Outro

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Whenever I deliver a viva help session I spend a lot of time thinking about the beginning and the end.

For the Intro I think about what expectations need to be set. What is critical for me to get across? What’s the logical sequence of information that people need to hear? And what’s my backup plan in case something isn’t right?

I think ahead about the Outro too: what points will I need to close off before I’m done? What parts of the session do I want to call back to? And how do I handle the sudden influx of final questions that participants might have?

To be clear, I think about everything in the middle too! But the Intro and Outro need some special attention of their own.

 

The same is true for your viva. In preparation you need the general flow of review and rehearsal to help for most of the viva – but I’d make sure you give a little extra thought to be ready for the beginning and end.

  • What do you need to know about the viva to feel ready for when it starts?
  • Do your examiners need to know anything about you and your situation to make reasonable adjustments?
  • What can you do to feel alright with any nervousness at the start?
  • How can you prepare for the end of the viva and final questions there?

Intro and Outro. Beginning and End. They’re small parts of your viva but important to think about and prepare for.

 

PS: I’m thinking a lot about the intro and outro for this Wednesday’s 1-hour 7 Reasons You’ll Pass Your Viva webinar! I love sharing this session and have delivered it over 100 times now. Registration for this Wednesday includes attendance, one of my pdf publications and a catch-up recording if you can’t attend live. I’m sharing two more sessions in November and December if this is too short notice but do take a look if you or someone you know is looking for viva help. Thanks for reading!

Nathan

Final Checks For The Viva

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Check that you’ve read the regulations.

Check you have done all the prep you meant to.

Check you know the logistics for your viva day.

Check you’ve got your thesis and anything else you need ready.

And check in with yourself: remember you did all of that over the course of years so you can do this too.

 

PS: If you’re still checking what the viva is all about then also check out my 1-hour 7 Reasons You’ll Pass Your Viva webinar next Wednesday 7th October 2026. Registration includes attendance, one of my pdf publications and a catch-up recording if you can’t attend live. There are also two more sessions before Christmas if November or December might be better!

Nathan

A Prompted Conversation

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It’s only a few weeks since I shared a post inspired by my old VIVA acronym tool, based on the following prompts:

  • Valuable (to others): what might someone else find useful in your work?
  • Interesting (to you): what do you find fascinating about your work?
  • Vague (or unclear): what do you find difficult to talk about or explain?
  • Ask (your examiners): given the chance, what would you ask your examiners at the viva?

I most commonly suggest that someone uses theses prompts and questions to write a summary of a chapter or their thesis – but it occurred to me recently that these could be useful words to trigger a conversation with your supervisor.

Your supervisor has seen your work develop over a long period of time so you can trust that their perspective will be meaningful. In particular:

  • Start by asking them what they think is valuable about your work. How has that developed over time?
  • Ask them what they think others would find interesting about your research. This could be a helpful way to get a fresh perspective on the impact of what you’ve done.
  • Find a way to engage them on what could be vague or unclear about your work. They’ve seen you explain what you do and can provide insight into what could be tricky to get across to other people.
  • Finally, get them to tell you what they would want to ask at your viva if they had the chance.

It’s important to remember on that last point (and all of these points) that your supervisors are not your examiners. Their perspectives don’t automatically carry over to other people, even other academics.

However, a different perspective is generally helpful to consider – and an experienced academic perspective will definitely be valuable for you as you get ready.

Nathan

It’s Supposed To Be Difficult

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Whatever else one might say about the viva – it’s a discussion, it could be really interesting, it most commonly leads to success – it’s very important to remember that it’s supposed to be difficult.

That’s a key expectation.

Given the level you’ve been working at you can expect that the topics up for discussion will be difficult. Given that the event is a challenge you can expect difficulty. Given your probable nerves and the sense of the unknown about what will happen you can expect your viva to be difficult.

The viva is supposed to be difficult – but not impossible, not necessarily stressful and not an overwhelming situation.

You might need to know more before you get there. You might need to focus on a particular area of preparation. You might need your institution to make some adjustments to your viva process to ensure that it is a fair situation for you.

You can expect difficult and also know that you can show yourself and your work in a good way. You can be ready for the difficulty you’ll find at your viva.

 

PS: If you’re looking for more help with the difficulty of the viva then consider signing up for my 1-hour 7 Reasons You’ll Pass Your Viva webinar next Wednesday 7th October 2026. Registration includes attendance, follow-up resources and a catch-up recording if you can’t attend live. Hope to see you there!

Nathan

Your Best Work

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Naturally, it is extremely likely that your examiners will want to talk to you about your best work. The headline results and conclusions that are central to your contribution.

  • How do you define your best work?
  • What lead to you working on it?
  • What’s the impact for your thesis and for others?

There’s more to your thesis than a single topic or piece though. It’s likely that there’s more they will want to talk to you about.

  • What other aspects of your work do you think they’ll focus on?
  • How do these other areas connect with your main contribution?
  • Is there anything you don’t think they’ll ask about?

Finally, it’s likely that these two categories are not all that you want to talk about.

  • What else would you like to come up in conversation at your viva?
  • What questions do you want to introduce into the discussion?
  • What do you not want to talk about?

Your best work will feature at the viva along with lots of other topics. Take time as you prepare to reflect on what could come up, how you could engage with it and what you need to do to be ready.

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