This is the second of 2 posts about prioritizing your work in progress. In Do you have too many writing projects? I explained why you need to limit the number of things you are working on at any given time and shared a free workbook to help you make those decisions. In this post, I talk about what to do with your list of projects. I’ve used the same introduction for both posts because it neatly outlines the issue.
Most of my clients have more than one writing project they are working on. And by “more than one”, it’s not usually 2, either.
They might come to me because they need help “finishing this book” or “getting things published”. And part of the problem is managing the teaching and admin and what do you do when your kids are sick and all that…
But there are usually a lot of other writing projects, too. In various stages of completion.
Between the general pressure to publish more, the tendency of research to produce more interesting questions, and how difficult it is to say no when someone invites you to contribute to a volume they are editing, you can accumulate a lot more projects than you can reasonably work on at one time.
Why limit your active projects?
To summarize what I said in Do you have too many writing projects?, if you have too many active writing projects, you can’t give any of them enough time to make a satisfying amount of progress and the costs of frequent task switching further limit your progress.
You risk being so frustrated that you feel like you can’t do this at all.
You do not necessarily have to limit yourself to just one project. The drawbacks of task switching may be compensated by the benefits of using a different project as a form of rest.
However, it is not advisable to have more than 3 projects active at any given time. Many people find 2 to be demanding enough.
How do you choose which projects?
There are multiple ways to do this.
Your overall goal is to get more things published. A published article is definitely no longer on your to do list.
An interim goal will be to get things off your desk to someone else: a co-author, peer reviewers at a journal, etc.
One criterion for selecting a priority is “closest to done”. A variation on that is closest to ready to hand off to your co-author (even if only as a draft).
Anything that has received a Revise & Resubmit decision after peer review is, by definition, very close to done, in the sense of ‘published’.
I strongly recommend making this your top priority. Use the comments from the journal editor and reviewers to make a revision plan. Then keep this project moving so you can get it back to the journal, and hopefully published and off your desk.
Anything that you’ve submitted is by definition, inactive. It has become impossible to predict how long the review process will take. You don’t want to spend time and energy worrying about stuff you can’t control. It’s better to feel mildly annoyed when you get the decision because you have to reprioritize your active projects.
As I said in Do you have too many writing projects? to get the full benefit of switching between 2 or 3 projects, you want projects that need different kinds of work, so working on one is a rest from the other.
If you haven’t already used the free workbook to get more clarity on
- how much and what kind of work each project needs,
- how you feel about each project
- Whether other people are involved
- The consequences of finishing or delaying
You can do that now. It will help you see which projects might complement each other either cognitively or emotionally.
I am not recommending “finish one thing before you switch to another” except for those things that are very close to finished.
I’m also not saying you need to abandon some of your projects completely.
Your goal is to be able to devote enough time and cognitive resources to a limited number of projects to see real movement and feel like the time you spend is worthwhile.
How long is “for now”?
You get to decide on the timeframe during which you will focus on this limited set of projects.
It needs to be long enough that you will feel like you’ve made progress on it, even if it’s not finished. Perhaps you define that by a specific milestone like “drafted the middle section” or “clarified the argument and outlined a new structure”. But it can also just be “this is what’s getting my limited writing time this month” and you can see how far you get.
Sometimes the work you do on the project will not directly affect the draft document. Perhaps you need to read more before you can draft the next section. Or, you need to go back to your analysis and refine it. Setting a time limit for this kind of activity can prevent necessary background work turning into a way to avoid writing the thing.
I suggest starting with a month.
You might have one “closest to done” project and one “other“.
You can also consider what kind of time and capacity you have this month, given the other things going on. Then choose a project that needs work that is possible in that kind of time.
For example, in summer, or on sabbatical, you probably want to prioritize a project that needs deep intellectual engagement with fewer distractions.
In contrast, in the busiest part of your teaching year, you might prioritize something that requires a lot of relatively straightforward work that can be done effectively in smaller chunks of time even when tired.
At the end of the month, use the Monthly Review prompts I send to summarize what kinds of work you have done on the projects you prioritized, and how much time you spent on each of them.
Clearly articulate how each project has changed because of that work, either in the document or in your head. Clarity about what you are trying to accomplish *is* progress.
Then you can also look at your longer list and decide if these projects are still your priority for the next month, or if you want to change something.
Maybe the kind of time available is different. Maybe something else has become more urgent. Or maybe you just need a change to keep you interested.
Resist the temptation to question your decisions more frequently than this. Changing things too frequently will lead to feeling like you aren’t making enough progress on anything. It’s discouraging.
The one exception is if you receive a decision from a journal about an article that is currently under review. A decision means it’s back on your desk.
A Revise & Resubmit decision (especially if it’s “minor revisions”) is, by definition, your top priority. You need to do enough work on it immediately to determine how much time you need, and ask for an extension on the deadline if necessary. If it’s been rejected you can wait until your next Monthly Review to figure out where this fits in your priority list.
What about the things you are NOT doing (this month)?
Prioritizing a very limited number of projects means actively deciding that another group of projects will be inactive for a while. At least a month. Possibly longer.
The Monthly Review helps ensure that they don’t get forgotten completely. But you kind of do want to forget about them for this month at least. Open loops take up up cognitive resources you’d rather use for your priority projects.
Remember: You will write this. Just not today, this week, this month, this summer.
If you’ve been taking on commitments with the mindset of “How quickly could I do this?”, there will be some emotional adjustment.
You are shifting your focus from quantity to quality. You are creating the conditions in which you can do things well. You may even finish more things per year because you are able to do better work in the time you devote to each project.
If one or more of the projects you are not working on right now involves other people, you will need to renegotiate timelines with them. The reflection prompts in the workbook will have resulted in some notes about the importance of this relationship and this project.
You might also want to remind yourself of all the ways in which you and the other person agree, or are aligned in your values.
Don’t assume they will be upset. They may also be overwhelmed and actually welcome your suggestion to put this particular project off for a month or so. That will help them deal with other things, too.
If you agreed to write a chapter for an edited collection or special issue and it is not one of your top 3 priorities, you will need to drop out of that particular publication. That doesn’t mean you are never going to write this thing. It means that after serious reflection, writing this thing in the timeframe required for this particular book or special issue, is not a priority for you.
Trust that you will be able to publish it somewhere else when you do get around to writing it. Show your respect for the editor and other contributors by communicating clearly and not slowing the bigger project down.
Here is some suggested language you can use as a template in this instance:
“I have been reviewing my commitments and have realized that I really do not have the capacity to take on this project right now and do a good job.
I’d like to withdraw now while you still have time to find someone else.
Thank you for inviting me. The project really is interesting. I just don’t have the capacity to do it justice.”
If you cannot renegotiate, then recommit.
Prioritizing is an iterative process.
You made your decisions based on what you learned by reflecting on the prompts in the workbook.
Figuring out how to communicate about a particular project made you realize that there were some factors you did not consider.
You can consider those factors now.
Make it a priority and drop something else.
This is difficult.
Making these decisions, communicating with the people you need to communicate with, making reasonable plans for your writing projects, and feeling confident that you are doing enough is really difficult.
It is made even more difficult by last minute demands from your head of department, opportunities you hadn’t anticipated, and the ways in which your colleagues may spread their own lack of confidence and fear around.
Many academics struggle with this at all stages of career.
There is no magic that will make it possible to do everything you want to do right now.
Be kind to yourself.
You are not a bad person for having started all these things. It’s pretty normal for things to get out of hand. You are excited about your work. You took on those things for good reasons.
The people you have made the commitments with have also been in this situation at least once. They might not like it, but they understand.
Limiting how many projects you are working on enables you to focus better on what you are working on.
You will enjoy your writing more. You will probably get more done.
You are now being realistic about what you can do and adjusting your plans. That’s it.
You can do this, just not all at once.
Subscribe to my newsletter to get the FREE workbook: Finish More by Doing Less and get your projects moving again.
Related Posts:
Do you have too many writing projects?
Optimizing Focus when your project brings up difficult emotions
What to do about a stalled book project
This post was based on the original June 2019 version sent to my newsletter, but it has now been completely rewritten and split into 2 separate posts. The other new post can be found here: Do you have too many writing projects?.
