Productive Philosophers: What Explains It?

Brian Domino (Miami U.) writes:

I am repeatedly asked various questions by graduate students, undergraduates and junior colleagues about writing. These questions might be condensed into the following single question: why do some people write (and publish) so much more than others? The two most obvious answers, institutional support for research (including teaching load) and intelligence, don't stand up to scrutiny.  If the top institutions have the lion's share of highly productive people, I think that the causality runs the other way (i.e., they got to those places because they were productive). I think that the "answer" has more to do with habits such as writing every day. I would be curious to hear what you and others think.

Interesting question; comments are open.  Post only once; you must post with a real e-mail address (which won't appear).  As always, comments reviewed for relevance!

Comments

[Peter Vallentyne]

Clearly, there are many factors that affect the quantity and quality of a person's publications. Intelligence, philosophical abilities, writing skills, knowledge of the standarad structures of philosophical papers, institutional support for research time are each important. My guess, however, is that that effectiveness of work habits accounts for a very significant amount of the variation in the quantity of publications.

For concretenes, I pass on the following, which is extracted from a handout that I give our graduate students on work habits:
- Know your work habit strengths and weakness and design a writing program that builds on your strengths and minimizes problems from your weakness. Customize the following to your personal situation.
- When you have teaching duties, you should devote at least 20 hours per week to research. When you have none (and nothing else significant), you should devote at least 40 hours per week to your dissertation (reading, thinking, discussing, and writing).
- Have a specific workplace for writing.
- Have set writing times (ideally the same times of the day; pick times at which your mental alertness is at its peak [the morning for most people]).
- Your workplace and work times should be selected so as to minimize interruptions.
- Recognize the importance of writing to discover even when the writing is deeply flawed (both stylistically and substantively). Just keep writing!
- Have writing goals (5 pages per day?, 20 hours per week?) and make sure that you accomplish them. (Note that this concerns writing and not reading, thinking, or discussing.)
- Have fixed deadlines for delivering drafts to your advisor and stick to them (no matter bad the quality).
- If you become blocked on a problem: (1) Write out what the problem is (make this your writing assignment). (2) Move on to another section or chapter. (Let your subconscious work on the problem for a while.) (3) Talk with others about the philosophical problem. (This is usually extremely useful.) (4) Post your problem on a suitable blog. (5) Accept that being blocked periodically is a normal part of the writing process. (6) Keep writing!
- Find one or two graduate students to share your drafts with and get them to provide feedback on content and style. This is extremely helpful.

[Brecken McKenzie]

It may shock some people here, but the reason some philosophers write and publish so much more than others is that there are some philosophers out there who - brace yourselves - don't care that much about publishing. Some of these oddballs actually care about the quality of their teaching more than anything else; and some of them just don't see much point in the drudgery of the journal.

[Thomas Basbøll]

Peter has more or less said it all for me. That's standard stuff. Everyone has their own variations on the standard theme: write in a regular, repeating pattern. This trains your mind to "prose" its thinking. (Brecken may have point, I guess; there may be arguments for resistance to such prosing. Though I don't personally think they are valid in academia.)

One thing I would add: productive writers more frequently go to bed knowing what they will be writing about in the morning than unproductive writers. They also sleep better.

[Gualtiero Piccinini]

There are two quite separate questions, here: writing and publishing.

How much people write is to some extent a function of how much they think they have to say (plus skills and self-discipline along the lines described by Peter Vallentyne above). Of course, feeling that you have a lot to say is no guarantee that what you write is worth publishing. And even if it's worth publishing, it may not be ready for publication. At any rate, some people write a lot even though they publish little. (And those who publish a lot may well write a lot more than what they publish.)

How much people publish is largely a function of how much they want to communicate with the academic community at large, plus a whole other skill set. That includes: (1) resilience in going through the long and challenging process from writing to publication; (2) patience and self-discipline in developing your work until it's careful enough by the relevant academic standards; (3) framing your work within the relevant literature so as to make it appealing to the average referee/editor/academic reader; (4) networking; (5) insight into which journals/publishers are most likely to be interested in your work; (6) thick skin and assertiveness in dealing with referees, editors, etc.

One more comment about intelligence and academic support. Academic support helps, but there are plenty of prolific people who have little academic support and people with excellent support who publish little or nothing. Intelligence helps, but there are plenty of intelligent people who publish little and dumb people who publish a lot.

[anonymous]

No one has yet suggested one fairly obvious possibility - namely, that some philosophers work harder than others!

Whilst I work hard, I can readily acknowledge that I have colleagues who work harder than I do.

Of course, people who work harder don't necessarily work better. Consequently, people whose work is of a similar quality might differ widely in how much they publish. And this is exactly what one finds.

[David Manley]

>Brecken: On the other hand, failing to publish can sometimes be explained by caring *too* much about publication, in the sense that one's standards for one's own publications are so high that almost nothing makes the cut. I have known people (actually mostly in other fields) paralyzed by perfectionism.

[anonymous]

A number of philosophers I know fall squarely in one of two camps. The first camp of perfectionists write a lot and are exceedingly hard workers. Their stuff is excellent (or not) but they still won't put a stamp on the stuff and send it out. I took a seminar thirteen years ago on a book that has yet to be sent out for publication. In another case, my colleague took a manuscript and sent it out for another member and it was immediately accepted by Oxford. As a junior faculty member, the pendulum has swung the other way. There are faculty I know who publish every idea that ever passes before the mind without regard to its quality. Even worse are those faculty who publish the only idea they've ever had again and again and again.

[Anonymous]

Productivity has nothing to do with whether one publishes or not. Perhaps there is a philosopher now living who is producing thousands upon thousands of pages of groundbreaking philosophical work and is being consistently rejected by the "top journals," but will come to be universally appreciated as a genius after s/he is dead. Or perhaps there is someone doing the same thing without even bothering with the journals or with academia in general.

Hell, who knows what gems could be found among the writings of unknown philosophy professors who spent their entire careers in the academic hinterlands, unsung and unappreciated? The professor that I replaced at my current institution taught for 35 years and never published a damn thing... but he wrote voluminously!! So why didn't he publish?

Well, for one thing, publishing wasn't a requirement for tenure here back in the day. Think about it: if you were perfectly happy at a given institution, as Prof. S was here, and if you didn't have to publish in order to get tenure at said institution, would YOU be as inclined to publish? Maybe yes, maybe no, but in all events, you wouldn't necessarily PRODUCE less.

If the main reason you're busting your ass to publish is to avoid perishing - and I suspect for most of us non-tenured, unknown, unranked people it is whether we care to admit it or not - then you probably don't care all that much about what you're writing (again, as long as it's publishable). If you happen to be really, really, really interested in or passionate about whatever it is that you're writing, and if it happens that whatever it is that you're writing is at least somewhat likely to get published, then great. But how often is that the case?

I'd venture to assert that at least 50-75% of what gets published in academic philosophy is utter crap. Analytical, continental... your work, my work.. ALL of it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but philosophers probably don't hit our stride - if we ever hit it - until we're tenured, at which point we can pretty much write about whatever we want however we want whenever we want. When I'm tenured, it no longer matters as much, if it matters at all, if some other philosopher thinks my work is utter crap. The worst that can happen is my feelings get hurt, or my "reputation" in the "profession" is "damaged." Give me a break!

So is this the situation for junior faculty? To get tenure, we have to produce a crap-ton of utter crap, but we have to fool (and arguably ourselves) into believing that it's NOT utter crap? And all this for the privilege of NOT having to write crap any more, or else to be able to write crap for the rest of our lives with impunity?

For what it's worth, I find that I do my best work when I don't think about my career or the profession at all.

[Brian Leiter]

I've let the last two anonymous comments in since they represent useful perspectives on issues related to our initial topic, but I'd like future comments to return to our subject: namely, what explains why some philosophers are more productive than others. Thanks.

[Steven Hales]

I think that Brian Domino's view that being a productive scholar causes getting hired at leading places (instead of teaching 2-2 at a great place causes one to be a productive scholar) is mistaken. There is too much of a feedback loop to be so blithely confident. For instance, I know someone of my generation hired into a tenure-track by a top-20 PhD program when his dissertation was still in his mind. Now he is a full prof at a very top program. His entire career has been 2-2 (or better) loads with lots of research opportunities and funding. And he has been very productive. I'm not denying he is smarter than me, but I sometimes wonder how much he would have published if had he been teaching 4-4 for 17 years like I have and doing all his own grading. Or how productive I would be if I had his job! There's too much randomness in the academy to be assured of a perfect match of talent/effort with job level. Moreover, one's initial appointment more strongly determines one's career path than does productivity (yes, I know there are exceptions).

[Anja Jauernig]

Expanding on Brecken’s line of thought, one’s productivity also has something to do with one’s goals and motivation. If the goal is to maximize number of publications (for whatever reasons, e.g., in order to get tenure, to advance the discipline by engaging in scholarly debates, to boost one’s ego…) one is well advised to pick topics and projects that can be dealt with in a reasonably short amount of time and in the kind of space allowed by standard journals and standard publishing houses, and that are ‘fashionable’ or ‘mainstream’ enough to have a chance to make it through the review process without too much delay. If one is disinclined or incapable of restraining one’s research in this way, one might very well find oneself stuck with papers that are too long, with book projects that take too much time, or with ideas that are too ‘odd’ to find their way to the press in expedite fashion, which, inevitably, results in a poor productivity rating. Of course, if one does not have the goal to maximize number of publications (or, at least, if that is not the main goal), one won’t much care about that. (And ‘how hard’ one works, plays no role in this whatsoever. Sure, if you don’t work at all there won’t be any publications, but few publications is compatible with lots of hard work.)

[dankaufman!]

during a period in which i was having difficulty working, i called a good friend who is a well-known M&E person and who publishes a ton of papers in top journals. i'll call him 'JS'. i asked JS for advice, and he gave me some suggestions. however, at the end of the suggestions, JS simply said "you've got to love what you do". reflecting on how lucky i was to be doing philosophy for a living made a huge difference.
although i think that there are productive philosophers who don't *love* what they do (at least not like JS, KM, JH, MT, and R/BP do!), all of the philosophers i know who love what they do are incredibly productive (in the sense of publishing stuff) with one exception (and even he has a famous philosophical problem named after him).

[Eric Schwitzgebel]

Peter Vallentyne's comment seems to me to hit the mark (with the caveat mentioned by Brecken and anon 1:36 that one needs to care about publishing).

I would add that intrinsic motivation -- inspiration even -- is probably more effective over the long term than extrinsic motivation (e.g., getting tenure, getting recognition). A lot of the most productive people have a nerdy passion that may look strange from the outside (e.g., wow, who'd've thunk someone could be *that* into Nicolas of Cusa!).

[Manyul Im]

There are probably a dozen or so factors in play here that contribute to the explanation for why one person publishes more than others. Let me introduce at least one that affects my own output; my guess is that it also affects that of many others. I find it difficult sometimes to balance my commitment to the personal relationships, especially those I feel toward my family members (wife and kids, mother, sisters, et al) and my commitment to my research. At some point, perhaps after attaining tenure, it was difficult for me to justify the sort of single-minded focus on projects that lends itself to super-productivity. I know some household situations are more accommodating to the philosopher's concentration and hoarding of spare time for research. Mine is not quite that way. This is something of an ethical issue, and one ought to negotiate one's personal and professional commitments from the point of view of a vision of the good life with which one is comfortable. In short, I can't produce quite as much as others because I feel like I should spend a significant amount of time tending to my personal relationships; pursuit of truth and other, perhaps less high-minded professional goals often take a back seat to this. With this I am comfortable, for the time being. Perhaps others share this experience. That is not to criticize the more productive for having different visions of, or being situated differently with respect to, the good life.

[Justin]

The reasons why some are more productive than others no doubt vary from case to case, and some of the reasons have already been mentioned. But an obvious reason that no one has yet mentioned is that perhaps some people find writing and publish rewarding. Some philosophers enjoy writing our ideas down and crafting (hopefully) good books and essays and then having them put forward to our peers and other interested readers. Certainly publishing in journals or with academic presses is not the only way to do this, but it is certainly one way. For some, it is rewarding to know that they have contributed to a discussion they find interesting and/or important. (I'm less skeptical than one of the anonymous posters about the quality of most philosophical work. No doubt some crap slips in, but I certainly would not say that most published work is crap.) And, contrary to what Brecken's remarks seem to imply, those of us who are interested in publishing and writing for its own sake needn't sacrifice teaching quality. Indeed, one of the most conscientious teachers I know also writes and publishes a great deal.

[Nathan Jun]

This is a very interesting discussion. Let me share some of my thoughts as a first-year philosophy professor.

I teach 4/4 at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, TX. This semester I am teaching over 150 undergraduate students all by my lonesome. I am married, extremely close to my family, have plenty of extracurricular interests, have pets, am a political activist, etc. etc.

Suppose Professor Jones teaches a 2/2 at Princeton. Suppose, further, that Professor Jones isn't married, doesn't have children, isn't close to his/her family, doesn't own pets, doesn't have any hobbies to speak of, doesn't give a hoot about politics, etc. Finally, suppose that "intelligence" and "philosophical talent" are quantifiable and that Professor Jones' intelligence and philosophical talent are roughly equal to mine.

Now, I'm asking y'all in complete seriousness: when does Professor Jones NOT have time to write? "That's an extreme example," you say. Okay, fine. Let's make him/her married. Hell, let's make him/her a triathlete, for crying out loud! It doesn't matter: The fact is, as a member of the Princeton philosophy faculty, Professor Jones will in *always* have more time to do research than I do, no matter *how* hard I work (unless, of course, I start completely neglecting my wife, my family, and every other aspect of my life).

Or am I missing something here?

I mean, I simply don't believe that "if you *just* work hard enough" you can (1) teach 4 really awesome classes every semester AND (2) be an awesome husband/wife AND (3) be an awesome dad/mom/son/daughter/whatever AND (4) be an awesome triathlete (or whatever) AND (5) write 5-6 awesome articles a year. It's just not possible.

Sadly, for me and the rest of the teeming masses who aren't at Princeton, NYU, Rutgers, etc. (but are trying to get to slightly better places with slightly lighter loads), published articles are our tickets out. So unless we want to be stuck with 4/4 loads forever and ever, I guess we just have to *make* the time... somehow.

But *how* do you do that? (Oy vey, this is one of many reasons why my wife and I waiting - perhaps indefinitely - to have kids. They take up too much damn time!! Isn't that sad?)

[yeah, yeah]

I offer this not to push a point, but just as an observation about a funny, interesting figure: Sidney Morgenbesser (late, of Columbia University) published very little. Yet he was an important (and even, by some, revered) figure in 20th century American philosophy. Some great philosophers leave little paper behind.

[Hans Machnichtmit]

Fascinating though the original question and many of the comments are, I find it extremely puzzling that nobody seems to point out the most obvious respect in which the question, "Why do some people publish so much more than others?" needs to be stated more precisely before it can be answered properly. Publish where - in what journals?

If the question is, "Why do some people publish so much more than others in excellent journals?", then the two obvious answers anticipated in Brian Domino's original question stand up to scrutiny far better than he suggests - though other commentators have mentioned highly interesting further factors too, including psychological ones.

If the question is, on the other hand, "Why do some people publish so damn much in obscure journals and collections?", then I have to say, that is indeed a truly puzzling question. It is very puzzling why the vast majority of philosophers outside of the world's better departments think there is any worth whatsoever in publishing tons of crappy, derivative papers in journals which nobody has even heard of. And they do. Why do all these people do that?

I know many of these people, and they typically aren't even themselves under the illusion that their work is stuff you need to have read if you work in their area. Why do they think that publishing tons of poor pieces in ridiculously bad outlets is something worth relating to others in one's CV, something that is to be preferred to publishing nothing at all? It's not just about getting a job; there are many who seem to revel in this activity even though their job situation does not require it.

The irrationality of this is particularly appalling if one takes into account how the Web has made arguments from availability utterly obsolete. In former times, you might have argued that publishing in an academic journal with a ridiculous quality control at least still makes your stuff *available* to a wider academic circle - at least a *somewhat* wider academic circle than your work would have reached had it remained in a drawer of your desk. But *that* argument is nothing more than a joke nowadays.

[Mark Eli Kalderon]

There are lot of factors, many have been mentioned already. There is one that has not. There is a big cultural difference between two models of philosophy. There is a discursive model descending from Socrates that emphasizes rational discussion and there is a literary model that emphasizes the production of the weird literature that is philosophy. Those who adhere to the literary model are more likely to produce more literature than those who adhere to the discursive model overall, all things being equal. Morgenebesser, Albritton, and many more adhered to the discursive model and published little.

[Anonymous bootstrapper]

I've found myself in a situation similar to Nathan Jun's. Since finishing graduate work, I had been teaching officially a 4/4 load at a school that doesn't really pay you quite enough to get by unless you have roommates or don't pay off credit card debt from graduate school. I've had to supplement by adjuncting and working part time. I did manage to get out of that situation by landing some publications, but it wasn't easy.

Professor Jun wants to know when someone like him could find the time to write. Here's how I did it. I'd revise manuscripts when the lines died down at work, I'd write on the train commuting between jobs, and I haven't allowed myself to take two nights off on a weekend since I was an undergrad. I don't have hobbies. I didn't worry about personal relationships until recently. I couldn't afford a pet financially and wouldn't have time for one anyway if I could. I often won't leave the office until after midnight and show up to teach classes the next morning in the clothes I wore the day before without taking the time for a shower.

I can't say that I have any advice for people unlucky enough to find themselves in Jun's situation because I think that most people in that situation just can't have it all. I knew going into graduate school that there was an exceptionally good chance that I'd have to sacrifice most of the things that normal people take for granted to become a philosopher and made that choice anyway. So, I regretfully say that I can't say anything encouraging or helpful to Professor Jun. This is for those of you thinking about putting yourself in his situation or thinking about doing it. I knew going into graduate school that I'd have to make sacrifices. It wasn't realistic to think that I'd be able to marry, have a family, have kids, etc... I hadn't fully realized that I'd also have to pass up on things like trips to the dentist, my cholesterol medication, pet ownership, the possibility of owning a home before I'm well into my 40's, a savings account, a vacation, a suit other than the one I bought for funerals my second year of graduate work, or an apartment that you live in by paying rent. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn't. Unfortunately, I can't kick my own former self in the ass. Unless you know yourself well enough to know that you can be happy being broke and alone for years of your life don't take the risk of putting yourself in Jun's position because once in that position it's typically downhill from there.

[Sandy Goldberg]

(Although this is perhaps only indirectly related to the point of the current thread, it does speak to the previous comment by yeah, yeah -- and since I have always been anxious to set the record straight, I hope Brian lets it pass.)

Morgenbesser, who was my teacher and mentor at Columbia, published quite a bit more than most people realize. (See e.g. the bibliography of his work in the volume HOW MANY QUESTIONS?, published by Hackett.) This said, I know that he was quite hard on himself, and hard on a good deal of what he saw published (alas, some of my own work was no exception here); and I suspect that this kept him from publishing more, especially in his later years. (I do know that he had a good deal of unpublished material at the time of his death; I myself spent a rainy afternoon a couple of years ago going through some of it, only to be haunted by the sound of his voice in my head as I read the text.)

I would pose the following as a question that we might take from the Morgenbesser case: among those who regard themselves as being able to "afford" not to publish at a high rate -- those who are where they want to be, who have tenure etc. -- to what extent, if any, does this freedom affect their rate of publication, or their attitude towards (or standards for) publication?

[anon grad]

I have no idea what explains this, but I'd love to hear from people who might know. Paul Benacerraf published, by my count (one can see his CV here: http://web.princeton.edu/sites/philosph/bios/benacerraf.htm), only 15 papers in his nearly half century at Princeton. But at least two of those papers are of such enormous importance, especially in the philosophy of mathematics, and so perfectly argued and crafted, he must have spent a great deal of time on them to get them so right. What about *that* sort of production? Did he ponder more profoundly and meticulously than others? Did he discuss issues effectively with colleagues? Did he go through many drafts, exchanging them with colleagues? Or did he just have a few flashes of insight over a short period of time and spend the rest of his five decades at Princeton lounging around?

I highly doubt the last suggestion is anywhere near the truth, but are there revealing stories about the research methods of those who have had field-changing insights? Alvin Plantinga talks in his "Profiles" book about the time when Gettier was coming up with his famous cases while at Wayne State. Alvin Plantinga, Hector Castaneda, Edmund Gettier, George Nakhnikian, Robert Sleigh, Richard Cartwright, and Keith Lehrer used to wander throughout the department and Detroit coffee shops all day doing nothing but talking and jotting down their arguments on napkins and bits of paper to make them explicit, hardly taking any time during the day to work on papers. Plantinga writes that, at the time, they hardly anticipated the significance of Gettier's paper as it presented just two of many counterexamples he had posed to them on the topic of JTB, and that his insights here were but a small fraction of the many insights they had witnessed from Gettier throughout their discussions. The time these figures spent together seems to have made a significant contribution to the course of their rather successful careers.

Is this sort of environment common for those who write papers of great impact? Perhaps for Benacerraf? (It would seem that it was *not* this way for Nietzsche.) If so, it would seem that those in better resourced and staffed departments have yet another distinct advantage over those who are filling a small niche at a small department with a large teaching load. There is not just time for work, but time for collaboration, and collaboration with some really keen minds who are not mystified by your research. How important is this to production? Do people make time for it?

[Thomas Basbøll]

Nathan: What you are missing is Parkinson's law and (something like) the law of diminishing marginal utility. Jones may have more time in absolute terms, but the difference between the productive writer and unproductive writer has to do with how they use somewhere in the range of 0.5-3.0 hours every day. It is a question of whether they set aside time for writing and spend that time actually working out the prose.

The good news is that this leaves room for both students and children. The sort of attention that you give to these things is qualitatively different from the sort of time you must devote to writing if you want to be productive. They don't really compete or trade off.

You shouldn't be thinking so much about your teaching that you can't think about your writing. Even with a 4/4 load, the last (ideally the *first*) hour every day spent worrying about your classes is not contributing enough to make it worth it.

It IS sad that academics let their teaching load keep them from writing frequently. It is downright tragic that they let this affect whether or not to have children.

[Nathan Jun]

Thomas: Notwithstanding my personal biases against economics in general and rational choice theory in particular etc. (and leaving open the very real possibility that I am just an idiot), I'm not sure I understand your first point. Is it just that having time at one's disposal is mostly irrelevant as concerns productivity unless one also has a strong work ethic?

It is true that I neglected to mention work ethic in my hypothetical comparison. So let's begin by assuming that "work ethic" is quantifiable and that Jones and I have an equally strong work ethic. But how do we quantify work ethic? If nothing else, Jones and I should be capable of devoting the same minimum amount of time to writing every work day - let's say, ceteris paribus, at least 2 hours / workday.

But presumably having an equal "work ethic" involves accomplishing the same sorts of tasks with our time, right? So perhaps we need to add an additional criterion here - e.g., that, ceteris paribus, Jones and I should be capable of producing a certain number of new pages of prose every 2 hours, or of editing a certain number of pages of old prose in the same amount of time, etc.

Now, I like to think that I have a pretty intense work ethic. But it seems to me that I most likely will NEVER have a work ethic "equal" to that of Jones according to this way of looking at the matter, and here's why. Even if Jones has 6 hours to work every day but only sets aside 2 - whereas I actually only have 2, if that - the work that Jones accomplishes during that 2 hours is ceteris paribus much more likely to be quality, productive work. Why? Well, for one thing, because it's not being "squeezed in" every day between a morning logic class and an afternoon directed study - i.e., it's not routinized, it's pursued at leisure. For another thing, because Jones has more time at his/her disposal it's reasonable to assume (again, ceteris paribus) that his/her professional life is less stressful than mine, which will in turn conduce to a more productive writing session. So, even if s/he and I are both "equally" primed for hard work and both have an equal amount of time to devote to said work, it seems likely on balance that Jones will out-produce me every time.

This has gone on long enough, probably doesn't make very much sense, and is in all likelihood riddled with fallacies of all sorts. However, I just wanted to note that in closing that I like teaching very much and take my job as an educator very seriously - at least as seriously as I take my job as a philosopher. I could be wrong, but in your last two paragraphs you seem somewhat dismissive toward teaching. In all events, I can't allow teaching to go by the board for the sake of research or vice versa. I try to pursue excellence in both as much as I can.

[Les Green]

No one has so far mentioned that it is quite helpful to be rich, or at least well-to-do.

I find graduate students who aren't working three jobs write better and more quickly than those who are. If they have children, they can hire help. When the books are out, they can just buy them. So choose parents in the top 5% or so of the income distribution, or get lucrative fellowships that help you to take advantage of Peter Vallentyne's excellent advice. Good writing habits will have a fair chance to develop, and then set in. Once set, they become hard to shake. Money is, of course, neither necessary nor sufficient--but it sure helps.

And before hitting the flame button, please read this posting with a dose of British-inflected irony. I think graduate student, and junior faculty, poverty are serious and often unjust obstacles to (early career) productivity.

[Andrew Moon]

In a recent Chronicle article entitled "Grad School Blues", the author spends time discussing the high depression rates of graduate students. The author writes, amongst other things, that, "Social isolation, financial burdens, lack of structure, and the pressure to produce groundbreaking work can wear heavily on graduate students, especially those already vulnerable to mental-health disorders." It wouldn't be surprising to me if these same factors affected one's publishing in the early years of a professorship job.

[Amy Lara]

This conversation seems to be pitting the situationists against the character trait theorists. If we're looking solely for predictability, I'm guessing that situational factors are far more predictive of "output" (which still needs to be defined precisely) than some ephemeral "work ethic." I'll add one more situational factor that sometimes plays a role: whether one is in a traditional marriage or not. People who have a stay-at-home spouse (and, let's face it, it's nearly always men with a stay-at-home wife) clearly have a leg up on the rest of us. I can see a definite difference in stress levels and schedule flexibility between those of my colleagues who have a stay-at-home spouse and young kids, and those who are in more egalitarian relationships with young kids. Those of us who are single have advantages, too, but not as many as someone in a traditional marriage. What I wouldn't give to come home from 10 hours of work and have a hot meal waiting for me!

[Marc Bobro]

Before having children, my work ethic as a grad student had much to be desired. I had no writing schedule and probably went out too much. When my daughter was born, I developed a habit of writing at 5:30 in the morning. This was the quietest, least stressful time of the day. Also, I certainly didn't go out as much. My dissertation effort become remarkably more efficient. In respect to productivity at least, I truly believe that having a child was a blessing in disguise. The problem now is that my early morning writing habit has gone out the window, but that's another story.

[Nathan Jun]

Andrew, et al. I'd wager that the vast majority of junior philosophy professors in the U.S. are suffering from mild to moderate depression and/or anxiety. A not insignificant number are probably suffering from severe mood disorders, alcoholism, and drug addiction to boot. The question is, how many of us were already complete wrecks in graduate school, and how many of us fell apart after a few years teaching 8/8 loads at Southeastern Podunk University? Anonymous Bootstrapper would have us believe that if you're not mildly to severely messed up in graduate school, you probably will be after a few years as a junior philosophy prof (again, unless you're one of the ridiculously lucky few who lands a killer job at Princeton or whatever). Why? Because apparently the only way to publish your way out of a 4/4 load at No-Name University is to have absolutely NO LIFE whatsoever outside of your work both prior to getting your job, and during the course of your job, at No-Name University. If that's truly the case, then philosophy graduate students should not only not get married and have children during GS but should actively avoid forming ANY personal relationships or developing any serious extracurricular interests whatsoever. All of this will just get in the way of productivity - the kind of productivity that's necessary if one ever wants to get to a PGR-ranked program or a nice SLAC or just a program with lighter loads. Apparently I'll never escape my current situation because I don't work every night until midnight (I spend time with my wife, who is also a working professional BTW) and because I take showers in the morning before my classes! Damnit, that's time that should be spent writing! I can't have it both ways, so alas, I'm just doomed.

[Christopher Hitchcock]

Comments on two of the lines of discussion in this thread:

1. Once upon a time, every major philosophy department had one faculty member who published very little, but who was very smart, knew everything, and had a hand in almost everything that went on (intellectually) in the department. In addition to the ones already mentioned -- Albritton, Benacerraf, Gettier, Morgenbesser -- think of Joe Camp and Burt Drebben. Today, tenure standards do not allow that to happen.

2. Reflecting on my own case: I guess I'm considered fairly productive. I have one of those cushy light teaching loads and ample research support, so I will not even pretened to offer any advice along the lines of 'you can do it if you just work hard' for those with 4/4 loads and other commitments. If you look at my CV, you will find a publication rate of about 70 pages per year. I suspect the order of magnitude will be similar for other philosophers consider productive. If it were just a matter of writing, this comes to an average rate of a little over a page per week. What this suggests, and what my own experience reflects, is that the barrier is not so much 'having the time to write', but being able to have enough new ideas and to write with sufficient quality to get the work published in good places. But make no mistake, this requires time. But not so much time spent just writing, but rather time spent reading, corresponding, discussing with colleagues, attending conferences, visiting other departments, and so on. And the process is, in a certain sense, inefficient. That is, I don't just decide to write on topic X, and then read only papers on topic X, and talk with experts on topic X. I read stuff that strikes me as interesting, and talk to people who do work I find interesting, and then write when I feel that I have something to say.

A few more reflections on my own experience:

3. Usually when I write a paper, it follows something like the following pattern: I spend a lot of time just thinking about something, reading, bouncing ideas around with colleagues, maybe occasionally jotting something down. Then, when I feel like an idea has gelled, I write the body of a paper in a short energetic burst, often about a week or two. I find this phase very intrinsically rewarding, and the energy comes pretty easily. This would be hard to do on a heavier teaching schedule, when it's hard to find a week that's not close to filled with other work. Then I spend a fair amount of time -- not so much in terms of hours, but in terms of a few hours spread over many weeks or months -- fine-tuning. Often this will involve presenting the paper at other departments, at conferences etc. Also, I will send the draft out to those I think would be interested and solicit their feedback. I find it very helpful to have several projects going at once, so that over the course of a day I can jump around, e.g. from reading for a paper in the early stages to proof-reading a penultimate draft of another.

4. I think pragmatism is very important to success at publication. Know which journals publish what kinds of articles. Master the style of a philosophy article. Understand which topics are current. Know what literature you'll be expected to discuss if you write on a given topic. Don't try to say everything in one place -- learn how to break your work into article-sized chunks. Don't wait for a paper to be perfect (it never will be) before submitting it to a journal.

[Alex Gregory]

I'm afraid I don't have much to offer other than a question: To what extent do people think that productivity is a function of the topic that you work on?

I'm just wondering whether someone working on Rawls would inevitably publish a lot less than someone working on the death penalty, for example, purely because there is so much more written on the former that one would have spend a much greater proportion of one's time reading all of the literature before being in a position to publish anything. (I've picked the examples out of the air, so apologies if my impression is wrong on these areas.)

[Steven Hales]

There are (at least) two separate questions in this thread:

1. What is the primary determinant of productivity?
2. What are some tips for improving one's productivity?

The obvious answer to (1) is, ceteris paribus, having a research load and institutional research support. It is unimaginable to me that anyone would seriously deny this. Is there anyone who believes that Martha Nussbaum or John Hawthorne (to randomly pick two leading scholars) would publish as much as they do if they taught four courses and three preps per semester, did all their own grading, and didn't have great colleagues and grad students to bounce their ideas off of?

Some people in this thread believe that the academy is a perfectly efficient market, that the cream invariably rises to the top, and that the best schools are exclusively staffed with the most deserving. I personally regard this as absurd, a sort of "if Frege was so smart, why did he spend his career at Jena?" thinking. Be that as it may.

Here's my $.02 regarding the second question. Rule #1: If you feel any kind of writing inspiration, drop what you are doing, put off the grading, and write. Inspiration is fleeting. Rule #2: if at all possible, don't agree to teach over the summers. Make that your primary research time. Go to the office on a fine July morning and really work. Rule #3: always be working on something. Even if it goes slowly, even if you don't work on it every day. Do something with your research every week, and don't allow big temporal gaps in your research.
Those things work for me.

[Mike Austin]

My own strategies as someone with a 4/4 load mirror those of Steven Hales above. I try to read and see what interests me, but with the 4/4 load (with family, community, and other commitments that I've taken on) one key to productivity is "to decide to write on topic X, and then read only papers on topic X, and talk with experts on topic X." Efficiency becomes a crucial ingredient of publishing success with a heavy teaching load, and leisurely reading, study, discussion, and reflection is not too frequent of an occurrence.

[Rob Rupert]

My experience was a lot like Marc B.'s. I had one child as an undergrad and two more as a grad -- and an egalitarian relationship, to boot. So dies the dream of direction-less noodling!

What are the (or at least my) rules?

-Don't overprepare for classes. I've known people who, for each class, prepare to go through seven iterations in the debate. It's a waste of time. Most of the students will be lucky to grasp the first iteration (which is fine). On the off chance that a student brings up something you haven't prepared to discuss, good for her. Respond thoughtfully. Show the students how to _do_ philosophy. If, off the cuff, you say something misleading, set things straight later.

-Don't develop a sense of entitlement or a habit of making excuses (I'm not accusing anyone here of that; I'm just sayin'). Or if you do, keep it at bay as best you can. These attitudes will probably interfere when free time presents itself. Don't say, "Why should I work? I'm entitled to a few hours off?" (time after time) Say, "Yeah! I have a few hours off. I get to think about asymmetric dependence (or whatever)."

-That being said, I follow something more like Hitchcock's model than the hour-a-day model. Play hard with your kids. Dive into your hobby for a day, if that makes you feel refreshed. Then, when you're in the shower on Sunday morning and the structure of the paper gels in your mind, spend the next ten hours writing it up. Even if you get only a third of it done, the sense of investment and accomplishment will carry you over until, say, Thursday afternoon when you get your next chunk of free time.

-Read everywhere. On the John. At your kid's soccer game (only when she's on the bench, of course). On the bus. While you're eating your cereal. Inertia is part of the plan. You might read only two pages of a paper while eating your cereal, but if it's a good paper, you're likely to spend an extra 20 minutes at the table finishing the article.

-Don't watch TV, play video games, or contribute to blogs :). At least, don't do any of these obsessively. Try to distinguish between activities that provide intellectual or personal rejuvenation and those that are being used as tools to avoid facing the paper you don't think you've got the wherewithal to write.

[robert allen]

There is no reason why a heavy teaching should preclude writing. Teaching actually facilitates writing. We are overlooking the possibility of incorporating discussions of one’s research projects into one’s lectures. The limited backgrounds of one’s students forces one to formulate one’s problem, solution, objections, and examples clearly and concisely. These formulations then make an excellent basis for a paper. I am a free will theorist and, thus, find ample opportunity to ride my hobby horse in my Intro and Ethics classes. In fact, I became a FWT upon being intrigued by the Frankfurt cases presented in one of my intro texts. (BTW, because the capitalists have eliminated 66 % of the full-time academic teaching positions, I am teaching 9 sections of Intro/Ethics/Logic this term to support my family. Has anyone heard of a heavier load? If not, maybe I’ll contact the folks at the Guinness Book. Seriously though, GD Capitalism to Hell: in a just society we’d have so much leisure time there would be no excuse for lack of scholarly productivity.)

I have found this thread very helpful, especially Prof. Vallentyne’s initial post. I do think, though, that there is one rather large but easily overlooked mistake in Mr. Rupert's post. Yes, a scholar should read and/or write at every available opportunity. I myself am notorious for taking books wherever I go. But I draw the line at my children’s sporting events, which border on the sacred. That seems too much like what John Lennon was getting at when he said “life is what happens to you when you are making other plans.” Plus, reading when one’s child is “on the bench”- heaven forbid- sends the wrong message to him/her as well as other players, parents and coaches. Just a suggestion.

[Rob Rupert]

Thanks, Robert, for the sound advice about reading at the kids' sporting events. Too late now; but I'll keep it in mind when it comes to the grand-kids (lucky if I be). About the Guinness Book, in my first term after getting the Ph.D., I taught twenty-eight credit hours: five five-credit courses and a three-credit course (all on the quarter system). So, if your nine sections are three credits each, I've got you beaten by one credit hour. But who's counting.

[Andy Beck]

I am yet a graduate student, and perhaps naive, but I am particularly surprised that none have suggested that some people may write faster than others, just as some read faster than others. And this not as a matter of commitment or 'work ethic', but as a result of some other (perhaps biological, cognitive, etc.) factor. I realize this is not at all helpful for those trying to increase their productivity. I have no doubt that research support, 'work ethic', intelligence, etc., all contribute. However, ceteris paribus all of that away and I think there will still be significant differences in work output (without correlated differences in quality).

[arithmoquine]

There are other factors, I think, besides those internal to the agent (e.g. writing habits) and simple external factors (e.g. lighter teaching loads). Those factors are social. Only Christopher Hitchcock's comment addressed this issue at all. One reason people with heavy teaching loads have so much difficulty publishing is that they, not coincidentally, teach in programs that do not have other philosophers available (with time, of course) to discuss philosophical ideas. Howard Gardner claims that geniuses require a "sounding board", someone with whom they can discuss and refine their thinking, and the same is likely to hold true for ordinary philosophers as well. So a lack of people with interest and expertise in one's area also poses a significant obstacle for publishing.

The other social issue that I believe contributes to difficulties people have publishing has to do with the expectations of journal editors/referees. I find that most published work exhibits a specialized style and vocabulary that is not easy to acquire (at least, I have not yet acquired it). Similarly, editors/referees are risk-averse and overworked, so they tend to use (consciously or not) these signals as evidence for quality of the philosophical ideas (which should be independent of the technical vocabulary and certainly independent of the writing style). So, work lacking these cues is more readily dismissed, and work that includes them is more likely to be accepted. I believe that more "elite" graduate programs train their students in this vocabulary and style.

This is even more speculative, but I believe there are other assumptions for writing built into the system, and it may be impossible to know what these are from outside the system. If referees tend to come from the successful publishing class, who teach students who become members of that class themselves, then any unconscious assumptions shared by members of that class would influence which papers are accepted and which are not. As I said, it is difficult to know whether this mechanism is operative, but I have received repeated comments that I cannot explain in any other way. For example, "This should be explained in terms of properties rather than events, even though the author correctly notes that the two are substantially the same." I suspect there is a shared set of assumptions or ways of writing about a particular issue, and that those properly enculturated write in those ways, and outsiders do not. These unstated assumptions help define group membership and make reviewing easier, but, if I'm right about this, (at least some of) these assumptions are unrelated to the quality of the philosophical ideas.

Finally, journals emphasize interesting material, and interesting material is less likely to be well-supported.