A writer stuck in a literature review spiral describes his 47 open Scholar tabs, a citation chain back to 1845, and a "to read later" folder he never touches. He calls it productive procrastination: gathering sources feels like writing, but he keeps promising to open Word and read just one more abstract.
All right, I'm finally sitting down to finish my lit review. Just gotta check one citation really quick. Hey, you've been in here for like 3 hours. Why do you have 47 tabs open on Google Scholar? Well, I found a paper from 2012 which referenced a study from 1998 which vaguely alluded to a lost manuscript in 1845, and if I don't read it, my entire thesis is a lie. You're doing it again. You're productive procrastinating. Downloading PDFs to a folder named "to read later" is basically writing. Open Microsoft Word now. Just one more abstract, please.
