Most academics treat writing like an emergency.
You've been taught that serious writing requires serious time.
You block off a Saturday. You cancel plans. You tell yourself this weekend will be different. You sit down with coffee at 8am, determined to finally make progress on that paper.
By 11:30 AM, you've rewritten the same paragraph three times. By 2 PM, you're exhausted and checking email. By Sunday night, you've produced maybe 400 usable words and you're dreading the next attempt.
This is binge writing. And it's destroying your output and productivity.
The academics who publish consistently don't find more time. They build systems that work in imperfect conditions.
I've seen binge writing wreck careers in lab after lab. I myself once spent half of a semi-sabbatical preparing to write and produced 12 pages. A mentee blocked every weekend for six months and submitted zero papers. Meanwhile, the most prolific researcher I know writes 30 minutes every morning, five days a week. She publishes at least six papers each year.
The data backs this up. A survey of 342 environmental biology trainees found that those who planned regular writing time during the week had more first‑author publications than those who wrote mainly in large blocks before deadlines. Students who only wrote right before deadlines published fewer first-author papers than students who wrote regularly on a schedule. For graduate students, writing on a regular schedule was the best way to get more publications.
“I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.” — popularly attributed to William Faulkner
Here's the exact system I teach my mentees:
Last week, I ran a poll wondering about renaming this newsletter. On LinkedIn (81 votes), 33% chose The AI Research Stack, on X (25 votes), 36% chose The AI Research Stack, and then curious enough, from the 52 of you who participated by clicking on the poll in your email, 32.7% choose Research Freedom trailed by 23.1% choosing The AI Research Stack.
I actually enjoyed the discussion on LinkedIn the most, where Cole recommended The Research Stack as the new name (and I kind of like it). Alina chimed in that AI may be too narrow for what the newsletter does and supported the idea of Research Freedom. Well, so here is the thing, because the newsletter has two versions: paid and free, I am renaming it to The Research Stack (free) and The AI Research Stack (paid) to emphasize the weekly AI prompts subscribers are getting in the paid version.
Step 1: Reject the Big Chunk Myth
Before you can design an effective writing schedule, you must kill the toxic belief that you only need long, uninterrupted stretches to write.
I find that way too often, thinking that you need this big stretch of time to begin writing is the actual writing block. We tell ourselves it’s our workload or that it’s our schedule or that it’s maybe our lack of discipline, but it’s often just that we feel pressured to find this big chunk of writing.
When, in reality, we don’t need to engage in binge writing, we just need to find little blocks of time to write consistently.
The mindset that is tricky here and that you need to overcome is that you think you need to have holidays, weekends, maybe even a sabbatical, to just find that writing time, so that you finally, ultimately, sit down and begin writing. The problem is, if you put that much pressure on yourself, you often end up in an emotionally charged, desperate state, and then you write for eight hours straight, maybe. Sure, you feel good in the moment, but eventually, you’ll burn out completely. And then—as a result of that—you will avoid writing for weeks. This is not how to form a good writing habit.
This cycle has a real motivational cost attached to it.
Every time you return to the draft after a long gap, you’ve forgotten the argument. You spend the first hour just remembering where you were. You rewrite the same paragraph three times. It can get messy pretty quickly.
One of the things I recommend to my mentees is to use snack writing instead to become more productive writers. The idea behind it is that you do short, regular writing sessions of 15 to 90 minutes that keep your project fresh in mind. You just use whatever works with your schedule and however short of a session you have. The idea behind it is that when you write in short bursts, your brain keeps working between those sessions and then hopefully you show up with clarity and you know exactly what to write next.
Let me emphasize here that you shouldn’t need to clear the decks or free up your schedule to find that time. Because the reality is that you’ll never finish all your emails, your grading, or your admin work. If you wait for a clear schedule, then you’re just procrastinating. You want to actually schedule something in or begin a writing session as soon as an opening appears in your schedule.
Step 2: Design Your Own Writing Setting
Now that you’ve rejected the myth of the big chonk (that’s what I should have called it), it’s time to design your actual writing schedule.
The best way to approach this is to treat your writing time like a formal class that you are teaching. It’s a non-negotiable item in your schedule and it’s recurring, so you’re defending it when others are trying to schedule something into that time. This is a technique known as time-blocking.
The first step for this is to identify your most productive hours of the day. Ideally, those are your sacred hours that you protect from interruption. This should be the time when your brain is most alert. For most people, this is in the morning, but I’ve also had success scheduling late-night writing sessions when everything is quiet in the house and I can really focus. Ideally, you need to find a time when you have maximum access to your cognitive resources and you can focus just on the process of writing. The downside of an academic workday is that you have a lot of meetings and you have to make a lot of decisions and these actions drain you and exhaust you. So, trying to schedule writing time right after those is usually not productive. You might get a snack writing session in, but you likely won’t get good writing done.
Block those hours for writing. Not for email. Not for meetings. For writing.
It does help to pick a defensible time slot. So, if you can, then choose hours that are unlikely to be invaded by student or colleague requests. You have to understand that once you’ve scheduled these blocks, if someone asks for a meeting during this writing time, you have to tell them that you already have a commitment. Because you do! This commitment is with your research writing. Stay consistent. Treat writing times as regular appointments with yourself.
Finally, it does help to establish a habitual site for your writing. If you’re using a consistent location, it will cue your brain that now it’s time to work. Now, it’s time to get writing. You can choose something inspirational like a a library corner, or a specific chair at home, or something as simple as your office. You just want to be consistent in the environments that you choose so that you can create this mental trigger. When you sit down in that spot, your brain knows it’s time to begin writing. Your brain knows what’s expected.
Location + Time = Writing reflex.
Step 3: Operationalize with Concrete Goals
A schedule is a great way to begin a good writing habit, but it is useless without tying it to specific outputs. So I don’t recommend to ever sit down to just work on your paper. This is such a mushy goal that lets you procrastinate while you’re feeling productive. It is very important to be specific with your goal before you begin the writing process. One good way to do that is to set a S.M.A.R.T. goal. This means it should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Here’s an example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal that you could use: In the next 45 minutes, write the methods subsection for participants (eligibility criteria, recruitment score, sample size, demographics, table stub, ethics approval line) for your current paper in about 450 words plus a table skeleton based on your existing study notes and protocol.
Or even simpler goals work, too: Write 200 words on the limitations section. Finish the second paragraph of the Discussion. Reconcile the citations in Chapter 3. Format Table 2 with the new data.
You just want to add a little bit of specificity to your goals and formulate them so that they give you traction.
Now, once you’ve scheduled a writing time slot, you probably also want to include pre-writing tasks in that scheduled time (and, specifically, in your goals) as well. This is anything that will move the academic article forward. Things like data analysis, reading the relevant literature, just sketching or outlining the arguments or formatting tables. These tasks get you in the mindset of writing parts of your article. Always advance the research project as a whole.
When you show up to your writing session, you should know exactly what you’re doing in the first 30 seconds. No wandering. No warm-up. Just getting the thing done that you set out to do.
To create an effective habit we often need accountability systems. Social pressure is one secret hack to create and maintain a regular schedule of any activity, because humans are such social animals.
Step 4: Build Accountability Systems
One way to do this is to join a writing group where you have to publicly state your targets for the week at the beginning of the week and then report your success at the next meeting. The simple act of declaring your goal in front of the group increases how you will follow through with it.
You could also create an explicit email trail that holds you accountable. The ideas here is that you regularly send your mentor or your writing partner updates that describe your writing behaviours, feelings, and your progress in a short bullet point list. And then you review this trail monthly to identify patterns that have affected your productivity.
The simplest way to do personal accountability is to track your time writing. For this you simply record your daily writing minutes or your word counts or both in a simple spreadsheet or a notebook. This is a way to trick your brain because now you know that you must record a zero in your log. Not having to write down that zero can be an extremely strong motivator to sit down, shut up, and write.
Step 5: Become a Master of Restarting
Now, as you know, nobody is perfect and often life gets in the way of writing. Your schedule will probably break and deadlines will probably intrude and there will be crises or you might get ill. It’s ok.
But the issue is that many do not have a system for how they will restart their writing sessions after such a snag occurs. So I would recommend the following recovery protocol in case of life getting in the way of your perfect writing time blocks.
- A simple way to restart your writing is to pre-engineer a warm start. You want to make the entry point so obvious that even a tired person could do it. This means that you never finish your writing sessions at a natural breaking point. You want to stop mid-sentence, mid-paragraph, anywhere where you have a clear jumping off point for tomorrow. This cliffhanger means that when you return, you’ll have immediate traction because you’re bound to finish the open loop that you’ve set the day before. So you never are staring at a blank page when you’re beginning your writing session.
- Don’t get caught up in the emotional drama of dealing with a lapse in your own writing. It is okay if you miss a day. You don’t need to make up for it by setting a huge binge writing session later. It is okay to keep a clear mind and simply return to your schedule the next day and just ignore that the lapse happened in the first place. There is no need to have an emotional investment in this. One missed session isn’t a writing failure. It is okay to just go back to the way things were before the lapse happened.
- As you’re becoming consistent in your writing, make sure to always reward your success immediately. You can easily bribe yourself with small treats after completing your writing goal. Things like having a nice coffee, going for a walk outside, or getting your favourite snack. This never hurts. But you should not reward yourself by taking a break from your writing schedule. You always want to reinforce good writing behaviour with the reward that you choose. Something that lets you stay consistent.
The Two-Week Test
You might still be skeptical about whether or not you can actually set up a consistent writing habit, but I would urge you to try the following experiment.
Week 1: Write in daily 30-minute sessions, Monday through Friday.
Week 2: Save all your writing for just one 6-hour weekend binge.
I would measure three things: your mental clarity, your stress levels, and your word output. This data should convert you faster than any motivational speech I could give you.
You’ll likely discover that the 30-minute sessions produce more usable prose with less exhaustion. You’ll notice that returning daily keeps the arguments in your mind fresh. You’ll realize that the weekend binge leaves you depleted, exhausted, and dreading the next session.
Try it out and report back to me how it went.
Start Small, Start Now
Creating new habits is hard and I want to leave you with some parting words to reminisce about.
First of all, I wouldn’t redesign your entire schedule tomorrow. You’re just getting into another productivity binge and it will likely not be successful. A better way to do this is to just have a short 15-minute session where you’re picking your most productive time. Think about this a little bit and then choose your location. One location that you really like and then just set one goal that you want to achieve. Once you have those three things written down, you should be good to go for your first writing session.
The next step, once you have your first writing session, would be to just write one simple new paragraph or to outline one simple new argument or just to revise one existing section of your paper. That’s it. One of those three. Not all three together. And then just stop.
The goal is just to return to this the next day. Leave things unfinished in the first session. It’s good. Remember those cliffhangers.
Once you’ve made a habit of returning to your draft, the drafts will eventually take care of themselves, because you’re not waiting for the perfect writing day anymore. We all know that doesn’t exist by now. But you now have a system that lets you work without having the perfect time. It just gets you started and returning to the drafts that are waiting for you.
P.S.: Curious to explore how we can tackle your research struggles together? I've got three suggestions that could be a great fit: A seven-day email course that teaches you the basics of research methods. Or the recordings of our AI research tools webinar and PhD student fast track webinar.
The AI Research Stack
Paid subscribers get the complete daily writing system: a printable worksheet to design your schedule, a session checklist to tape next to your monitor, and three AI prompts that generate your session goals, decline meeting scripts, and session-end notes so you never waste time re-reading. ↓