Writing
December 17, 2014
The paper I am working on.
The paper I should be working on as my top priority.
The paper I can’t wait to work on once the last bit of data we are waiting for arrive.
The paper I shouldn’t bother working on until one of the manuscripts under review comes back with comments.
Only two of these refer to the same manuscript.
DrugMonkey 
December 17, 2014 at 12:19 pm
1 and D?
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December 17, 2014 at 12:20 pm
Ha! I know how you feel. Why do you think I sometimes show up here?
Except in my case you can substitute ‘grant proposal’ for ‘paper’ in most cases. In my head, this site is connected to grant proposal procrastination.
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December 17, 2014 at 12:24 pm
In my experience, these four almost never refer to the same manuscript. And I would add a fifth, which rarely corresponds to one of the previous four:
The paper I want to be working on.
And where do you put the half-dozen papers that your graduate students are making too slow progress on…. ?
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December 17, 2014 at 1:49 pm
In my head, this site is connected to grant proposal procrastination.
I prefer to call it ‘grant writing research’.
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December 17, 2014 at 6:32 pm
I call it “professional development,” same as when my kid’s teachers don’t work for a day, every single month (???)
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December 19, 2014 at 7:37 am
Cripes. How did some other manuscript not mentioned above take over my workday??!!!!??? Focus, man, focus!
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December 19, 2014 at 10:14 am
Hey, DM, better to have some other manuscript than nothing at all. Many irons in the fire and all that. Right?
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December 19, 2014 at 11:04 am
Well yeah, but at my advanced age one has a tendency to accumulate more potential manuscripts that one had lying about earlier in the career.
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