1.6 Save time by picturing your paper’s structure as an hourglass
When you picture your paper’s structure as an hourglass, you’ll save time because you’ll realize that you won’t know what should be in each section of your paper until you know what’s going to be in the Results section. You’ll then realize that the very first step in time-effective paper writing is to finalize the collection and interpretation of data for the Results section.
When you start your paper from the Results section, you’ll save time because you’ll only be writing about materials / methods relevant to the results that actually end up being in your paper (as opposed to wasting time writing materials / methods relevant to results you imagined would end up being in your paper but which didn’t make it to the final version).
When you start your paper from the Results section, you’ll also save time by writing a streamlined Introduction section that’s just broad enough to end up targeted at your results (instead of wasting time writing an Introduction section that takes an overly broad viewpoint and ends up having to be substantially reduced in length prior to peer review).
When you start your paper from the Results section, you’ll save time by writing a Discussion section that discusses only literature and contexts that are relevant to the results (instead of wasting time writing about irrelevant literature and contexts).
In brief, when you picture your paper’s structure as an hourglass and start your paper by preparing your results, you’ll save time because everything you write for every section of your paper will have a higher chance of remaining in the final version of your paper that’s submitted to the journal for peer review.
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