The Philosophers' Cocoon

In our November “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

I am a junior faculty member (2 years post-PhD) and I am writing to ask for advice on how to cope with severe burnout and rejection fatigue.

Here is my situation: I currently have three papers in circulation. Over the past two years, they have faced a cumulative total of 13 rejections. The most painful blow was recently receiving a rejection after a grueling round of R&R that took months of work.

My mid-term evaluation is approaching, and as of now, I have zero publications to show for my time. To make matters worse, it feels like many of my peers and friends are landing hits in top journals, which exacerbates my anxiety.

At this point, I feel psychologically paralyzed. My confidence has taken such a hit that I am struggling to find the courage to even look at my drafts, let alone revise them again. I feel stuck in a cycle of shame and avoidance.

I would be grateful for any advice from this community. How do you emotionally handle this level of serial rejection? For those who have been in a similar “slump,” how did you manage to break the paralysis and recover your productivity?

I am sorry that the OP is going through this. I went through something similar early in my career and recall very well how stressed and defeated I felt. Although I’m just one person, I did happen upon an answer that worked well for me. Here’s more or less what happened.

First, I received advice that I needed to get more work under review. Given how high journal rejection rates are and how long peer-review takes, I was advised that one needs more than just a few papers under review. For what it’s worth, I’d recommend the same thing to the OP. I don’t think revising their 3 existing papers repeatedly is the best way to spend their time. Reviewers are both diverse and fickle, and there is no guarantee that revising the papers to satisfy one set of reviewers will satisfy the next set of reviewers. Instead, the OP should keep sending out those papers but spend more time producing new papers. Alas, given how discouraged/burnt-out they are, I imagine motivation to do that may be difficult.

This brings me to what “changed the game” for me. I too was burnt out and discouraged. So instead of worrying about publishing, I decided to just start writing up arguments on ideas that I found interesting. Seriously, that’s it: I remember coming to something like the following realization: “If I am going to fail at this career, I at least want to go out doing work that I enjoy and that feels authentic to me.” So, I started drafting up new papers, one after another, just trying to enjoy the work. And voila, it actually worked! I started enjoying my work again, produced a bunch of papers (ending up with maybe 10 under review), and although I still dealt with lots of rejections, I started getting acceptances. Then, once I started getting things accepted, the pressure dissipated a bit and I kept things up.

I don’t know if this same approach will work for the OP. We’re all different, after all. But I wanted to share it, just in case it helps.

Do any readers have any helpful insights/experiences to share?