One of the things I have begun to appreciate with time is the value of drafts. I am pretty good at cranking out a first draft of a paper, and then I hate editing and revising it. The editorial process for me is way more painful than the writing process itself. But as I said on Twitter, I feel like we are afraid of drafts. We want things done well on the first round. I will admit that my first few years I got plenty of papers “Accepted with Minor Revisions” which might have hindered my ability to cope with rejection and the need to rewrite multiple drafts.
I would like to start my 2019 with a micro-thread on the value of drafts. When I bought these Post-It notes with goals (Get It Done) and weekly plans, my Mom and brother said to me: “isn’t your Everything Notebook exactly for these purposes?” pic.twitter.com/3DdPFqYLaS
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) January 1, 2019
I answered “yes, but since I travelled here without my Everything Notebook (it was a personal trip), I need something that helps me draft my goals and to-do lists that I can then transcribe (or simply paste/attach to a page in my Everything Notebook)” pic.twitter.com/RsjFCHo4bp
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) January 1, 2019
Drafting stuff gives you the mental space and permission to refine it. Knowing that stuff will always need to be polished also makes you resilient to R&Rs that are very demanding. And drafting goals and To Do lists helps you prioritize the most important ones. This is something I realized in 2018. This 2019, I made a promise to myself to be more willing to write drafts of things (weekly plans, to-do lists, papers, etc.) and then finalize once I’ve considered all the relevant factors. I hope to be able to stay with my resolution!
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