[Project Management Series] Writing Problems versus Writing Tasks (Re-Release BONUS)

After coaching dozens of academics one-on-one in our Navigate program this past year, I’ve developed a brand-new concept that’s transforming how academic writers plan, prioritize, and stick to their writing timelines: the difference between writing problems and writing tasks.

I’m so excited to bring this concept into the curriculum of our Navigate program. We’ll not only teach you how to distinguish between problems and tasks but also how to manage each with clarity and confidence. Want your own lightbulb moment? Tune in and learn how to take your academic writing process to the next level. 

Writing Tasks: Predictable, Repeatable, and Plan-Friendly

I define writing tasks as the repeatable, smaller parts of academic writing that are often misunderstood as unpredictable but can be learned, timed, and managed with clarity. Think of line-by-line copyediting, formatting citations, or drafting an abstract after the full article is written. These are the kinds of activities that don’t necessarily require your unique scholarly brain. They’re systematic, even outsourceable, if needed. Once you start tracking how long these take you, you’ll gain real power in your planning. This shift enables academic writers to move from vague time-blocking to confidently estimating the time required for their writing tasks and scheduling them accordingly.

Writing Problems: The Scholarly Work Only You Can Do

Writing problems are complex, intellectual decisions that only you, as the author and scholar, can resolve. They include things like deciding on the scope of your literature review, interpreting data, or determining what to include in your discussion. These aren’t predictable or easily timed because they require deep thought, iterative thinking, and sometimes emotional processing. By naming them as “problems,” we’re not saying they’re bad—we’re honoring the fact that they are the real work of scholarship. In Navigate, we teach a completely different project management approach for writing problems, so you can stop trying to schedule them like tasks and instead manage them in a way that reflects their true nature.

“Not all writing tasks are the same and so I realized that making a distinction between writing tasks and writing problems is the key to create different project management approaches to each of these two different things.”

“Writing problems are the thought work, the decisions you have to make about your manuscript. They are THE scholarly work. They are the things that you must do as the scholar in your paper or your writing.”

We’ve opened the waitlist for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and get on the waitlist here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Get on the waitlist here!
2. Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
3. If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.

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