One of my coauthor shared this immensely inspiring advice with me: write the paper first by Jason Eisner (2010). In short:
If you’re planning to submit a conference paper, I’d like to strongly suggest that you spend the next few days just writing the paper (even if you haven’t yet planned or finished the experiments).
The motivations is explained from the perspective of getting computer science papers ready for submission to conferences:
If the conference deadline is approaching, writing is the best use of limited time—instead of being stuck on unfinished experiments or proofs. Furthermore, finishing a draft earlier gives you an unexpected market-design-ish advantage, if you imagine your advisor as a clearing house of manuscripts-awaiting-edits:
Five students can be hacking in parallel at the last minute, but they can’t all be co-writing with me at the last minute. You have your own computer but you have to share your advisor.
A document is a focus for discussion with others:
writing up in the form of a final paper makes you (1) integrate everything in one place, (2) decide which ideas will be made central for this paper, and (3) focus on the coherence and impact of the end product.
A document is an organizing scheme for planning on future work to finish the paper.
Especially helpful for procrastinators, or people like me who have jiggling thoughts distractingly bouncing out of my mind every second…
Lastly, writing now is a favor to oneself:
You’ll feel so much better once you have a draft! The looming deadline will not be nearly so stressful. Pull your all-nighters now (on a self-imposed draft deadline), not in the days leading up to the submission deadline.
Jan. and Feb. are deadline months for CS people, and even some deadlines are right during Chinese New Year… good luck!