Cut back what distracts you from impact

You have a goal (Step 1) and a plan (Step 2). The hard part is finding the time. Investing in the relationships behind impact takes time most researchers don't feel they have, so this step is about becoming efficient and focused enough to make that time.

Prof. Reed writes about this at length in *The Productive Researcher*. Here we summarise the key lessons and point you to ideas that can meaningfully change how you work.

How to prioritize is the single most important lesson we've learned, from our reading, from interviewing some of the world's most productive researchers, and from our own experience. You might think you already know how. But what sets the most productive researchers apart is their unusual ability to hold a laser-sharp focus on their priorities minute to minute, day after day, month after month.

That focus comes from how they set their priorities. These priorities are more than preferences, they express the researcher's values and identity. Priorities that come from this deep place stand the test of time, which makes it far easier to say "yes" to what matters most and "no" to the many things that would otherwise distract.

Start by paying closer attention to how you spend each day, and how each task connects to your impact goals and your broader life goals. This step asks you to find at least one regular task you can remove entirely or cut back substantially.

Think about how work is distributed across your team. Are there colleagues who'd actually benefit from taking on some smaller tasks, reviewing papers, say, to learn how strong academic writing is structured? And consider where AI can take routine administrative work off your plate.

The problem every academic recognises, the day never being long enough, usually comes down to poor priorities. Two ideas changed how we work:

Prof. Reed discovered Parkinson's Law by accident: handed a research-centre role, he had far less time to prepare lectures and ended up preparing them on the day. More stressful, but his student ratings rose, because he leaned on intuition and passion rather than notes. He gave himself one week to draft a literature review the same way; it became his most-cited paper (over 2000 citations).

You don't have to be selfish with your time. But if you have a genuinely important goal, spend a little time on it every day, even half an hour, and you'll be amazed how much more satisfied you feel, week after week. Once you focus on the important things, you realise many of the "urgent" ones aren't that important after all.

Be brutally honest. List what you did yesterday (or a typical day) with rough minutes, and mark each as high-value (the work that moves your impact goal forward) or low-value (urgent-but-not-important). Your entries save automatically.

Many of us fear the world will end if we stop doing what every other academic does. So ask: what would actually happen if I stopped this? Picture your worst case, then ask whether you could reverse, cope with or recover from it. If you could, cut it, in almost every case, the worst case never comes to pass.

The more time you give your work, the more tasks fill it. That's why we never work weekends, work only our contracted hours, and take our full holiday, and feel rested, unresentful and, as a result, highly productive.

To take this further, see our *The productive researcher* workshop.