Maximize peak writing season in 3 steps: Pause, plan, then progress

I think of this moment in the academic calendar as a kind of window of possibility for my clients (those on the Northern Hemisphere calendar, anyway). Teaching and administrative duties taper off, which means most business school professors can finally shift to their “real” work: research, writing, and laying strong foundations for the next academic year. 

But having worked with hundreds of researchers during this pivotal season, I also see many if not most struggling to make full use of it. How many times have you heard, “My summer was awesome, thanks, and I got so much done!”? How many times have you ended the summer thinking that yourself? 

If you’re like most people, the answer to both is “Never.” And your summer actually looks more like this:

May: Phew! I’m absolutely exhausted but classes and exams are all finished. Sure, conferences are underway, but hopefully now I’ll have some more time to start making progress on all those things I didn’t finish last semester. 

June: OK, those conferences took a lot more out of me than I might have expected, but NOW I’m sure to get some great writing time in soon.

July: Wait, it’s already JULY? What happened to June? Ugh, time to binge-write like the wind, I promised that draft to Catie in August!

August: So pieces of several drafts are sort of done… another paper is almost done… but I’ll have to let Catie know that nothing is actually done enough to edit. And now I’m panicking because classes start in three weeks BUT this is also my last chance to take some semblance of a real vacation before the insanity starts all over again. 

September: New year, new classes… nope, I can’t possibly write anything this month. Maybe I’ll be able to finish that paper by the end of December, that’s a more realistic goal…

Sound familiar? You’re definitely not alone if it does. 

And this pattern of failed goals starts now, when you pivot from teaching and grading to analysis and writing with barely a week’s breathing room. That’s like heading into a powerlifting meet straight off the back of a grueling marathon.

You’re left with:

• No time to rest and recuperate so you can process the term’s takeaways and switch tasks effectively

• No focus to plan out your goals and a realistic schedule for reaching them

• No energy to feel curious, passionate, and creative—all the things that make your research compelling to top journals

So instead of sabotaging your peak writing season this year, bulletproof it with a simple three-point structure you can implement starting now:

Pause. Plan. Then progress. 

Here’s how. 

Pause

First, as soon as you read this, find a window in the next week or so to do nothing at all for 3 days. For 3 full days, just be. Rest. Eat. Enjoy some time with people you love and plenty of time alone if you can. Live like your only job is to down-regulate your nervous system. Early bedtime and a full screen detox are encouraged.

This 72-hour pause isn't just "doing nothing." It’s the brief shutdown and time offline before starting up again that your brain desperately needs. It’s also not the same as a vacation (which can be far from restful, especially if you have kids in tow), so don’t consider a trip to be a replacement for this period of dedicated rest. 

The only thing you will actively “do” during these 3 days? Keep a notebook or digital file available for anything that comes into your mind: “I really have to start…” or “S***, I still haven’t…” or “As soon as I’m back at my desk, I need to…” or “If I don’t get something submitted before tenure review…” You get the idea. Dump it on the page.

You’re not even going to clean your desk or check emails or wrap up that dangling thread from last week. Rather, if anything comes to mind that you would like to take care of once you’re back in the saddle, simply write it down and let it be. But keep this running to-do list somewhere out of sight. We’ll get to it in our next phase: Plan.

Plan

After 3 days of decompression, you’re now in a much better position to reflect on the past year and plan for the next one. However, we want to “reboot” gradually.

Turn to the list you dumped thoughts into during your 3-day pause. Scan it with three categories in mind

1. Things you can cross off right now; they don’t actually matter as much as you thought and they deserve none of your time or energy (e.g., reviewing student evaluations—extra useless if you’re a woman—or responding to an email that doesn’t even deserve a response)

2. Things you can cross off this week; they’ll take a matter of minutes to complete, maybe an hour or two at most (e.g., archiving course materials, writing letters of recommendation, cleaning and resetting your physical and virtual desktops for research season)

3. Things you can’t fully cross off this week; they’ll take hours of work, maybe much longer (e.g., writing a literature review section for a new paper, revising a paper under R&R, writing a grant proposal, etc.) 

With category 1 items gone, you now have your foundations set for the coming weeks. 

Specifically, you’re going to devote next week to completing or deleting category 2 tasks, and also use part of this week to map out your category 3 tasks across the next few months (i.e., this mapping out is, itself, a category 2 task to tackle within the next week). 

Then you’ll spend the rest of the summer making meaningful progress on your category 3 goals by working at a realistic and consistent pace. 

Progress

You’ve decompressed, you’ve strategized, and now it’s time to make progress within a framework that protects your new-found clarity.

First and foremost, you’re going to block off the time you need to work on your goals as sessions devoted to either resolving problems (i.e., making higher-level decisions by devoting time to thinking about, analyzing, researching, and/or discussing them) or executing tasks (i.e., clear bounded actions that reflect your higher-level decisions); see this post for a full rundown of this system and why it works. Most, if not all, of your writing sessions should be for executing tasks.

Build Your Best-Ever Writing Season

How often should I write?

I recommend scheduling 4 dedicated writing blocks a week; this seems to be the sweet spot where people can make dramatic and consistent progress on their writing BUT without burning out under the rigid oppression of a “write every day” mentality. These sessions should be exactly as long as you need them to be: shorter (10–30 minutes) if you’re still working on just showing up to write consistently, longer (45–180 minutes, with breaks) if showing up isn’t that hard for you and you’re ready to dive deep and make serious progress on your drafts. 

That said, just like working out, doing as much as feels doable for you is infinitely better than doing nothing at all. So if your inner resistance kicks up at anything more than a couple writing 10-minute blocks a week at present, then two mini sessions is your ideal starting point. When trying to build a positive habit, far too many people get caught up in optimization when all they should be focused on is showing up consistently. 

When should I write?

In terms of when to schedule these sessions, here’s the trick most people don’t know about: don’t fall for the common advice to write when you’re most mentally “on.” Instead, pick the time of day when your inner critic is the most “off.” 

This subtle but important distinction can completely transform your productivity. Most writing advice says to write when you feel at your most alert, creative, and brilliant in order to have productive sessions. I disagree. It’s much more effective to be in whatever mental mode allows you to get the most words down on the page per session. 

The reality is that perfectionism is a far bigger obstacle for most academics than motivation or brilliance. So by scheduling your writing sessions for when you can feel your most “unfiltered,” you actually make more progress on your drafts. I know what you’re thinking: “But Catie, how is it progress if it’s just absolute garbage??” The answer is that all progress is basically garbage at first. It’s very rare indeed that an idea flows out of your head and onto the page exactly as it will get submitted to a top-tier journal. Trying to make your writing sessions work this way is only going to work against you. Rather, aim for trash, and lots of it! 

The professors I see who embrace this “done is far better than perfect” approach inevitably end each summer with several drafts that are ready to be cleaned up and honed (by them or by me). The professors who can’t get out of their own way and aim for excellence in their writing sessions? They’re the ones still struggling to arrive at a single draft that finally feels like something they can be proud of. Experience tells me that the first group has far better odds of success, especially if they stretch this approach out across a whole career.

How can I stay on track with my writing? What happens if I get stumped?

First, close every writing session with an on-ramp into the next one. This could be as simple as leaving a quick comment to yourself in the margins: “CATIE, still developing idea of x within the above context, need to expand on this and connect it to y tomorrow; still missing mention of a, b, c studies too.” Or it could be a more comprehensive outline on paper, next to your computer, of the overarching research story that you’re fleshing out, marked with a symbol or a note to signify your current spot in it. (Bonus points if you leave positive and encouraging messages to yourself as well.) By giving yourself a concrete and positive stepping stone back into your writing before you close it for the day, you’ll significantly reduce the friction and delay that characterize the start of almost any task. Less resistance = faster and greater flow in each session.

Second, leverage the power of accountability. When you’re serious about accomplishing something, someone else needs to know about it. This could be a coach, mentor, coauthor, or professional editor waiting on your draft—but give them express permission to hold you accountable. Tell them your chosen deliverable, the deadline for it, and the consequence you want them to enforce if you don’t reach it, even if that’s just an email asking what went wrong. (I have more than one client who’s requested that I refuse to edit their paper if it hasn’t hit my inbox by a particular date!) This accountability can be on a long-term or daily basis. Maybe you agree to start each writing session with a message of confirmation (“Starting now”) to a colleague. Maybe you and your coauthors “co-write” on Zoom together. Whatever works!

Third and final tip: When you have a great writing session, take a moment or two to think about why. What made that day so productive? Did it feel enjoyable or hard? Why? What time did you write? How long? What didn’t you do? We’re looking for clues here as to how you work best on your most important career outcomes—and what we find in this regard will be a lot more helpful than the usual focus people seem to take on what went wrong, what fell through, etc. 

And remember, if you’re ever stuck in your writing, reach out for help as soon as you possibly can. There are plenty of people who are happy to help, including me. Aside from consultations and edits, I have a huge library of resources—many of which are completely free—designed specifically to help business professors with their high-stakes writing.

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Final Thoughts

In the classroom, you’re an instructor, performer, mentor, and project manager. In research, you are an architect and a deep-thinker. These require fundamentally different cognitive "operating systems." Giving yourself a clear structure to effectively switch between them allows you to maximize your peak research and writing season—with outsized impacts on your publication pipeline and, in turn, your career. 

Take a pause, clear your mental cache, and then move into writing this summer with clarity and confidence instead of panic and exhaustion. Your future published self will thank you!