One thing is becoming clearer and clearer to me the further away I get from being a graduate student, and that is that it is important to trust oneself, write papers relatively quickly, send them out to conferences relatively quickly, revise them relatively quickly, and send them out to journals relatively quickly. In other words, I have discovered that it is important to get a lot of papers done and out, without being too much of a perfectionist about them. As Steve Jobs said, "Real artists ship." Let me explain what I mean by this, lest I be misunderstood.
Let me be clear: I do not mean to suggest that one should write sloppy, bad papers and send them to conferences or journals. That wastes everyone's time. My claim is that I have learned, though first- and second-hand experience, that successful philosophers develop the ability to write decent paper drafts quickly, write a lot of them (by trusting their philosophical instincts), and get those drafts out to conferences (and later, to journals) in a relatively short amount of time. Let me explain why.
I have heard some people say that it is better to focus on getting one or two great papers right and published in top journals than to write a lot of second-rate papers. I think this is a false dilemma, and that believing it is a recipe for disaster. Allow me to use my own case as an example. There is a paper from my dissertation that I have been working on tirelessly for over six years. I have written over 60 full drafts of it, presented it at several conferences, received promising comments from some top journals, and truly believe that it makes an important contribution to the field...yet I have not published it yet. In short, I have worked very hard to get it right, and I believe that (slowly!) it is getting there. But now notice where I would be today if this had been my sole focus. I would be up sh*t creek without a paddle. I would have no publications, and over six years of frustration.
Let's think a little bit about the publication process. In academia, one must publish or perish. Yet the publication process is absolutely horrific. One can get a string of slow, irresponsible reviewers one after another. On top of that, even when reviewers do a great job, standards are incredibly high. Top journals have acceptance rates well under 5%. You can also get "scooped." You can spend years on a paper only to see someone else publish something very much like it first. Etc. Because of all this, putting all of your eggs in one basket -- focusing all of your attention on one or two papers -- seems unwise. And indeed, every individual I personally know who has succeeded in publishing philosophy has not pursued this course.
My first year out of grad school, I approached three people who had been in my grad program who had enjoyed a great deal of success. I asked them for advice. All three of them independently told me the same thing. They told me to "get stuff out." I trusted them. I wrote a lot of papers, and quickly. I used to spend months getting a paper draft together. Now, on average, I get paper drafts done in two to three weeks. Are all of the papers awesome? No. Are some of them not even decent? Yes. And yet...the more you get done and out (to conferences, etc.), the more efficient you become and the more you learn how to distinguish the good from the bad. So, for example, suppose you write five papers over the course of two months. You send them to conferences. Two of them get accepted, you get great comments, etc., whereas the other three continually get rejected. Well look, this is great. By getting stuff done and out, you have gotten feedback that two out of your five ideas have a good chance of flying with people, and the other three aren't quite working. Notice how different things might have been if you'd spent months on each of those papers. You would have spent a ton of time on them, and in the end you probably would find out later (from other people) that three out of the five paper ideas won't fly. That's not a very efficient way to spend your time.
Why, then, in a nutshell, is it important to get stuff done and out quickly? I think the basic idea can be captured in the traditional idea of a division of labor. Two minds, the proverb goes, are better than one. Well, maybe...but they are certainly more efficient than one. By getting lots of stuff done and out quickly, you "offload" to other people perhaps the most difficult aspect of philosophy to accomplish: the task of determining what will fly to others (e.g. in the publishing world). When you send papers to conferences, etc., you learn which of your ideas others find attractive and which of your ideas you are sort of deluded about. Figuring this stuff out on your own is very, very difficult. Ideas that you think are awesome just might not fly to others. So don't try to figure it out on your own. Trust your instincts, write things up, send them out. Let the world help you figure out which of your ideas fly. Yes, you will receive lots of rejections, and even some mean comments. But you will have spent your time wisely, and effeciently, and I bet you will have some good publications to show for it.
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