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Is it possible to write a paper in a day? I've been watching @JnfrLTackett talk about this on social media for years and it seemed like some dark magic.
So, this month I gave it a try and this is what happens when you try to write a paper in a day...
1/nhttps://twitter.com/mcmullarkey/status/1071912349068611585 …
For background, I sent out @mcmullarkey's excellent thread to my lab and asked for volunteers to try out the #paperinaday
This month, we tried it with 3 different papers (one theory paper, one empirical paper, and one commentary) - each with different sets of co-authors.
2/n
I will say that in each case it was a huge success. I polled my lab afterwards and everyone enjoyed it and wanted to do it again. Not only was it effective for writing a paper in a day (or at least most of the paper), but there were other hidden benefits I didn't expect... 3/n
The first immediate benefit is that blocking off a big chunk of time in advance with co-authors serves as a powerful pre-commitment device. It locks you in to work on a project and helps you hold off many of the other meetings, emails, etc that stop you from writing. 4/n
The second, unexpected, benefit is that it is far more efficient than the typical back-and-forth over email. You can hammer out figures, disagreements and confusion in minutes using a whiteboard - these would otherwise take hours or days over email. 5/n
The third, unexpected, benefit is that you can engage in "deep work". By blocking out distractions and diving in, we made far deeper progress that what we'd typically accomplish over small chunks of editing. 6/n
A fourth, unexpected, benefit was the theoretical richness that emerged from the deep work and sustained conversation. We were able to zoom out from the details to a much higher level of abstraction. In at least one case, our theoretical framework become much better. 7/n
The fifth, unexpected, benefit was the social connection. We went for lunch/coffee, caught up and had fun. It reminded me of the joy I had in grad school from sharing an office and bouncing around ideas all day. This is a great way to get some of that experience back. 8/n
In sum, we all found it *very* useful, throughly enjoyed it & are planning to make it part of our lab DNA. I'm grateful for learning about this idea and having collaborators willing to try it out. I definitely encourage others to try it out and see if it works for them. 9/n
This is especially useful for getting faculty members, like me, to sit down and complete a paper. I'm often the bottleneck for papers because I'm on about 6 committees, teaching, etc. at any time. My collaborators benefit from tying me to a desk for a sustained period :) 10/n
To be clear: there was not quality vs. quantity tradeoff as one might expect. If anything, the biggest improvement was in the *quality* of the work because we had the time for deep work and many minds were working through complex ideas until we arrived on the same page. 11/n
And to all the skeptics - I was once you. I get it. Then I acted like any good scientists and ran a little pilot experiment to see if it would work. So, feel free to collect your own data and see if you can replicate our success in another context. 12/n
my advisor Keith holyoak used to ask for a draft in two days. I thought that was crazy, but then would work hard and get it to him in 4. Then we’d spend one day going through about 10 revisions before sending out. If not for him, I’d have taken 2 mos. Expectations matter.
Totally—if you get stuck thinking it’s supposed to take 6 months, it probably will.
Shouldn't the question really be: Is it possible to write a *good* paper in a day? :)
To be perfectly honest, our thinking and writing got much better as a function of blocking off time for "deep work". Indeed, I would argue that the quality increase is the biggest benefit you get from doing this (it easily overshadows the benefit of increased quantity).
Very interesting! But you are native speakers, right? Much of the writing time for me is trying to formulate my thoughts in a second language. Do you think non-native speakers can pull this off?
This is a great question and one I cannot answer. It's possible that it might not work as well. Alternatively, it could work ever better since you have non verbals to help you get on the same page. At a minimum, my experience suggests it is worth a try at least once.
Yes, will definitely try this. Dedicating a full day to writing together won’t harm at all – but I don’t think we could write a full paper in a single day. Ready to test that hypothesis and be surprised by reality, though
I am open to new experiences. And we can also try in Dutch first. We had some ideas for that, right? 
You’re on!
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