I recently delivered a keynote lecture at the 30^th annual meeting of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. While I was there, two junior scholars independently asked me the same question, “What is the most important piece of advice you would give to a new assistant professor?”

It was hard for me to come up with the answer on the spot (self-promotion alert: partly because I actually have a whole book of crowdsourced career advice). But as we engaged in conversation, the winner emerged: “Prioritize projects that are closest to publication.” I heard this advice early on in my career, and it made a huge difference for my productivity and happiness.

Here’s the specific order of priorities that I encourage everyone to adopt (and strive for myself):

1. Proofs for papers accepted for publication
2. Conditionally accepted papers
3. Revise-and-resubmits that need to be resubmitted
4. Working papers closest to submission (whether it’s a first submission or a subsequent one following a rejection)
5. Projects closest to becoming a working paper
6. Early-stage projects
7. New ideas

Why is this the right order? Because it allocates things efficiently and keeps your research pipeline flowing. The efficiency comes from getting things off your desk and onto someone else’s as quickly as possible, which means that you will publish your papers as quickly as possible. Imagine you have a few weeks of work left on your job market paper before it’s submitted. But you set the paper aside for six months and work on a new project instead. Well, you still have to do the work, but now you’re months behind in the publication process relative to where you could have been. And if you do that repeatedly, your pipeline will get clogged with many research projects that will crowd each other out (I speak from experience, by the way).

By contrast, if you prioritize getting the most advanced projects out the door, you will move faster, with fewer bottlenecks, and feel the satisfaction of steady progress. You will be able to work on new projects without feeling conflicted, because your existing ones are under review. You will be less frustrated by waiting for editorial decisions because you will have plenty of other projects to work on. You will avoid the mental clutter of unfinished projects and free up headspace for creativity.

Now let’s discuss some specific items on the list. I don’t think most people have trouble with 1, partly because there’s usually a short and clear deadline. Based on my observations, 2 and 3 also don’t seem to create problems for most people, but it’s still worth emphasizing that they should be priorities.

The most trouble arises with 4—pushing to submit working papers—followed by 5. People can get stuck for a number of reasons. For me, working on newer projects is much more exciting than polishing existing ones. It’s much more thrilling to run the first regression than to add the tenth robustness check that someone suggested, to fine-tune figures and tables, or to polish the introduction for the fifth time. But developing the discipline of sitting down to do the parts of the research process that you dislike is, in my opinion, part of the “secret” of professional success. I think it’s also important to try to protect as much of your best time—when you can think clearly and work without interruptions for a while—for items 1-5.

Am I saying that you should literally never pursue any new ideas until everything that’s higher priority is off your desk? No. Working on shiny new projects is fun and can be a good reward for spending hours editing your introduction or running a myriad of robustness checks that reviewers requested. (Make sure you also reward yourself in ways unrelated to work). But try to devote the majority of your available time to the highest-priority item on the list.

I’m also not saying you need to rush getting papers under review, in terms of cutting corners. The optimal amount of effort to polish a paper or to revise a paper after it’s been rejected for submission to a new journal are separate considerations. Nor am I saying you should ignore your other responsibilities, like teaching or service. This is about how you use your research time. And sometimes there are valid reasons for stepping away from a paper, like wanting to look at it with fresh eyes or recover from a rejection. But you should not take more than a week or two for something like that. After that, take a deep breath and go work on getting that paper ready for submission to a journal. It’ll be worth it.