Hey Reader.Hello!

I was going through my inbox this morning, deleting emails.

Lots of emails.

Offers, guides, free downloads, must-do-this, open-this-now, here’s-how-to-fix-that kind of emails.

You know the sort.

And I caught myself deleting emails from people offering to teach me how to manage my Google Workspace, write better emails, organise my sales pages and all sorts of other things that I’m apparently doing wrong.

And then I stopped - because I realised that I’ve actually got a fairly small group of people whose opinions I really value, and whose approaches have become central to how I run my business (and my teaching, if I'm honest).

If I want to know something about Google Workspace, I listen to Dara.

If I want to think about writing emails, I listen to Liz.

There are others, too, for different things.

And I keep these people in my inbox because occasionally they’ll say something that makes me stop and think, or changes the way I approach something.

It’s not that everyone else is wrong, or that they don’t have something useful to say. It’s just that I’ve worked out whose opinions I trust, whose methods suit me, and whose advice is actually relevant to what I’m trying to achieve.

And that makes it much easier to ignore the noise.

Which got me thinking about doctoral research.

Because I suspect we all have a version of this in our academic lives.

There are people whose opinions carry more weight than others.

• It might be your supervisor.
• It might be a lecturer from a module you took years ago, who said something that really stuck with you.
• It might be someone you’ve met at a conference, or someone whose work you follow online.
• It might even be me!

And then there are the authors you read.

I talk a lot about identifying your key authors, the people whose work really matters to your study.

But there are also all the other authors. The ones who make a useful point, provide a bit of evidence, offer a different perspective, or contribute something quite small to your overall argument.

And I know this causes problems when people are writing literature reviews:

• How much attention do you give the big names?
• How do you acknowledge the smaller contributions without getting bogged down in endless descriptions of who said what?
• And how do you build your own argument without sounding as though you’re simply following someone else’s thinking?

I think part of the answer is knowing whose voices matter, and why.

Not because the others should be ignored, but because not every voice needs to carry equal weight.

So here’s a little Friday exercise for you.

Take five minutes and jot down the people whose opinions you really listen to in your doctoral work.

Then think about why.

What is it about their thinking, their research, their advice or their approach that makes them important to you?

And who are you listening to simply because they’re making a lot of noise?

You might find that making those distinctions helps you see your own thinking a bit more clearly.

And perhaps gives you permission to stop trying to listen to absolutely everybody.

Because there’s a lot of noise out there.

And your doctorate doesn’t need all of it.

Always in your corner,

PS If this landed for you, do let me know! I love to hear from you, and I'm always happy to answer questions :)