As I have said before, I am a member of two labs. Neither of them are very prolific, but for somewhat different reasons. The one I consider my primary lab is super slow getting papers out mainly because nothing is ever considered final. There are always a few more samples to analyze, more statistical tests to run, or other ways to look at the data. Add to that the slow internal review process in our group, and papers just never seem to get submitted* (my frustrations with this will probably expand into future posts).
This lab culture makes me feel like it is a Herculean task to write and submit a paper. I think writing one’s first paper is often a battle. But it seems to be a particularly huge deal in our lab and that makes it ever more intimidating to complete a draft and give it to my advisors.
I worked exclusively on this paper for the first few weeks of the year, which included reworking stats and figures. Since then, I have interspersed lab work with writing, either working part of the day in the lab and part at my desk or alternating whole days. I find that I feel much more productive when I’m in the lab, which adds to the psychological difficulty of writing. I know exactly how long it takes to do different bench tasks, so I can plan the time I need to complete them. If I finish what I set out to do, I feel productive and good. Unfortunately, I have no idea how long it should take me to write sections of a paper, so it’s hard for me to tell if I have worked efficiently at writing. It’s a little frustrating.
I think this will change as I gain experience. I welcome suggestions or advice from your vast experience, readers.
*The papers are undoubtedly better for it. When they do get published, they are awesome and highly cited.
6 comments:
I think alternating tasks is best (from my not-so-vast experiance at least). That was you can still feel productive due to the lab work and get the writing done. Plus, I think it is important to step away from your writing to look at it fresh and be able to revise effectively.
I have to switch tasks every other day. Splitting the day seems to result in no productive research and very little writing.
Hmm...every paper has been different for me. Some have been relatively easy to write, others have been pure torture. I think it depends on how clear it is to me what the paper's main message should be. So for me, there isn't a defined amount of time it should take to write any particular section of a paper. Mostly, I just write until I'm either happy with it or too sick of it to look at it anymore. The latter almost always happens first.
I am not yet too proficient at writing, so I try to give myself a full day at a time to really get into it. And I agree with you: it is very difficult to even begin to measure productivity at writing.
I can relate to the whole slow rate of publication thing; my friends across the hall are publishing a heck of a lot more frequently, mainly because their advisor is yet to be tenured. My lab tends to only submit papers that couldn't possibly get rejected.
I'm finally starting to be more productive at writing, and realizing its not as insurmountable as I used to think it was - I came from a lab with the same attitude as yours, that it was such a big deal to be writing a paper. I recommend Paul Silva's How to Write A Lot - its really good and can be read in an hour or two. I started keeping track of my progress in an SPSS file - the date, my words written, the project, the goal, whether i met the goal, etc. It sounds cheesy, but it helped me make writing regular, and it also helped me realize what a reasonable writing goal is.
I just read dr. brazen hussy's post on the same topic.
I think it's really bad that they make it seem like a herculean task. It shouldn't be. It's the currency of what we do. You need to get familiar with it.
The key for me is to break it down, down, down, and knowing where to start and what kind of 'mode' I'm in that day.
If you want, I could write a post about this. I'm not sure if I haven't written some about it already. But it would be too long to leave in a comment here.
psycgirl, I like those ideas. I work best with a lot of structure, so I bet that keeping track of time and goals would help keep me butt in my seat and just do it.
MsPhd, a post would be great.
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