Be systematic

At this point it is important to create space to consolidate our work. We will no doubt have lots of references, paper, notes, data and lots of different versions of our paper on the computer.

I used to be notoriously bad a cleaning up files, and this can cause a big mess in the future, particularly if I get an R&R 6 months later, where I have to go back to the research having not thought about it since I pressed submit, and find the correct version of my paper.

Organising our files is critical to being an efficient writer. So in today’s writing slot, I want you to clean up your material, either old school or on-line. File and label and organise so that you can come back to these notes in future and they will be immediately helpful. No warm up, no wondering ‘where is that thing?’.

We need to do this now whilst we are still engaged in the project and we can remember what all this stuff is for, and how we have used it. It is important we don’t organise too early (in the middle of deep work) as this can be a procrastination tactic, and pointless because you may be adding new material.

It is good to do it now because I want you to have a day away from reading the main text in preparation for tomorrow.

So right now is the perfect time to spend one session organising.

TODAY I WILL…

• Turn on my time tracking software;

• Spend my writing slot organising my notes for 2 hours and 15 minutes.