Look at your desk. Really look at it. I’m thinking of both your physical desk, with physical papers strewn about, and your virtual desk, with folders and documents.
I bet you have a stack of conference papers that need to be turned into journal articles. And some notes on other things you want to write. Maybe a “revise and resubmit” from a journal that you really just need to get to. And then there is the thinking and analysing and interpreting you are doing on whatever your current project is. Sooner or later that is going to turn into yet another draft (or drafts) of an article or a book manuscript…
Your desk is like my garden.
When I moved into my previous house, the gardens looked like the photo. There are lovely perennials all over the place — hostas, peonies, iris, roses … If they were all well tended and looked after, it would be amazing. The people we bought from had lived here about 5 years. The people before them had established extensive gardens.
But the people we bought from were more into horses than gardens. They seem to have kept the front gardens weeded. But it doesn’t look like they ever split the hostas or iris. And the further from the house you get, the more likely the gardens are to be overgrown with weeds.
I don’t really feel any pressure about it. I figure that another year or two is not going to make a huge difference. I’ll do what I can, as I can, and it will improve slowly.
My approach…
I could get overwhelmed with deciding what to do. Maybe I’d be tempted to start with a plan of how I want my gardens to look and systematically work on that plan to achieve that objective.
What I do in practice is to just start weeding. One weed or section of the garden will be annoying me and I’ll put on my gardening gloves and just start pulling stuff out. There really isn’t a plan, though there are beds that I look at more often and thus get priority. And some weeds look pretty, so they get left.
It is amazing what I can accomplish in 15 minutes.
You don’t need a plan to start.
Just like I don’t need a garden plan to pull a few weeds, you don’t need a publishing plan to make progress on your research. If you only have 15 minutes a day, you can just pick something on your desk and do 15 minutes of whatever needs doing to it.
For some of those things, your first 15 minutes might involve rereading the paper and making a list of what needs doing to paperclip to the top of it. Then the next 15 minutes can focus on one of the things on that list. Use coloured paper and you’ll be able to find lists of things to do easily when you sit down for your 15 minutes of research time.
You don’t need to deal with everything.
Some of what is on your desk is just weeds. It doesn’t need pruning or splitting or any real care. You just need to pull them up and throw them out. So sometimes you can spend your 15 minutes weeding — going through part of the stack of old conference papers and deciding which ones you aren’t going to publish.
Remember, weeds are just plants that are in the wrong place. Some of them are beautiful. Just because you decide not to take a piece further, doesn’t mean it was crap. It just means that you have moved on and this is no longer a priority or worth the time it would take to make it into a worthwhile publication.
Acknowledge loss.
Deciding not to do something, or not to finish something, is a loss. It is not easy. Acknowledge the loss to yourself. Allow yourself to grieve a little bit. If you can’t bring yourself to throw that paper in the garbage then create a file for pieces that are “hibernating”.
The important thing is to get things off your desk that you aren’t going to work on. You don’t need it sitting there making you feel guilty and overwhelmed. You can acknowledge how important it was in helping you get to where you are now intellectually and then put it away.
Limit the weeding.
I said “sometimes” on purpose. Don’t spend all your time weeding out things you aren’t going to take further. Too much weeding and you’ll start to question whether you have any worthwhile contributions to make or any stick-with-it-ness at all.
One weeding session a month might be more than adequate. Then get back to working on one of the other things on your desk.
All of it gets easier.
It might feel weird at first to just grab a paper and do some work on it with no clear plan. It will certainly feel weird to grab a paper and admit that you can just let it go. But as you get into a rhythm of spending 15 minutes a day doing these things, they will become easier. And one day, your 15 minutes will be planning how to get one of those things to “finished”. Or making a priority list of what to work on.
Don’t let planning get in the way of doing. Start anywhere.
Related Posts:
Letting go of unfinished projects
Communication vs Validation: why are you publishing?
Edited May 26, 2016. Re-edited June 2025. Added to the Spotlight On: The Power of 15 Minutes in August 2025.
The piles of other people’s papers I might need someday to reference are overwhelming to me. I’m now going to think of them as the compost pile. A relief since then I can allow them to turn into something else, and get spread to other places.
JoVE, there’s so much fantastic stuff in here, I almost don’t know where to start. The metaphor is…dare I say a very “fertile” one?
One of the points that really hit home for me was “You don’t need to deal with everything. Some of what is on your desk is just weeds. It doesn’t need pruning or splitting or any real care. You just need to pull them up and throw them out.” YES!!! In fact, I’ve started writing a blog post about that. If it goes up today? Great. If not? Well, we’ll see what I can accomplish in about 30 minutes of writing. ;o)
The “not needing a plan” is another biggie for me. A LOT of resistance comes up in response to that statement. Obviously something to pay attention to.
Thanks, JoVE, for some great reminders here.
(And Christine, I **love** your compost pile analogy!)