The Hidden Drain on Your Scholarly Energy
How to protect your cognitive energy for scholarship that matters
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from work that should feel routine but somehow never does. You sit down to do something you've done dozens of times, like setting up a Canvas course, preparing materials for a new writing group, submitting paperwork, or onboarding a research assistant, and you don't know where to start.
Wait, what do I usually do first? Where did I put that template? Am I forgetting something crucial?
The work itself isn’t intellectually demanding, but it drains you nonetheless, quietly siphoning energy away from the thinking and writing that actually needs your full attention.
This is where standard operating procedures—SOPs—can make a remarkable difference in your scholarly life.
An SOP is simply a documented set of steps for tasks you repeat regularly, and it can be as formal as a detailed checklist in a shared folder or as informal as a running note you keep for yourself in Google Docs, MS Word, or perhaps even just a note on your phone.
The underlying principle is elegantly simple: you make the decision once and document it, so you don’t have to remake it every single time. You do the cognitive work upfront so that future-you doesn’t waste precious energy re-solving problems you’ve already figured out.
This matters more than we typically acknowledge in academic work, where we often operate as though our cognitive energy is inexhaustible. It isn’t. When we spend that limited reserve on logistics and procedural questions, we have substantially less available for the work that truly requires our expertise.
Decision fatigue doesn’t only arrive at the end of an exhausting day; it shows up anytime you’re repeatedly making small decisions about how to execute a task rather than focusing on why the work matters and what insights you want to bring to it.
SOPs reduce that cognitive load in ways that create meaningful momentum. They help protect your limited attention for the scholarship that actually moves your research forward, and they make delegation genuinely possible—you simply cannot cleanly hand off a task to a teaching assistant or research assistant if the entire process exists only in your head.
Consider the classic high-friction task of setting up a Canvas or Blackboard course shell.
You might only do this a few times each year, which means you forget just enough details between semesters to make it frustrating every time. An SOP for course setup transforms this recurring headache into a straightforward checklist:
Duplicate the previous course shell
Update syllabus dates, policies, and links
Check assignment deadlines and adjust for the current term
Upload or link weekly readings
Set up gradebook categories and weighting
Post a welcome announcement
Publish the course to students
Once this checklist exists, you no longer need to hold the entire process in working memory or waste energy wondering whether you’ve forgotten a crucial step. And if you work with a teaching assistant, you can hand over part or all of the process without recreating your thinking from scratch.
The same principle applies to research work, where repetitive tasks can drain energy that should go toward your actual thinking and analysis.
An SOP for preparing a conference presentation might include:
Review the conference theme and your panel’s focus
Identify your core argument in 1-2 sentences
Select 2-3 key examples or pieces of evidence
Draft an engaging opening that establishes stakes
Time yourself and cut to fit the slot (with buffer time)
Prepare a closing that invites specific questions or discussion
Or an SOP for your weekly writing sessions might include:
Review previous session’s notes and identify where you left off
Set a specific goal for today’s session (word count or section to complete)
Silence notifications and set a timer
Write without editing for the designated time
End with brief notes on next steps and lingering questions
Log your progress and schedule your next session
This isn’t about rigidly constraining your intellectual work; rather, it’s about creating reliable on-ramps so you don’t waste energy wondering how to begin each time.
Once you start looking for them, SOP opportunities are everywhere.
For example:
Research
Weekly writing session setup and shutdown
Responding to peer review reports
Managing citations and PDFs
Onboarding and training a research assistant
Tracking project status across multiple manuscripts
Service
Preparing for recurring committee meetings
Reviewing student applications or files
Writing annual activity or merit reports
Handling common student email requests
Rotating administrative roles with clear handoff points
You don’t need to systematize everything. But if a task is repeated and mentally taxing, it’s a strong candidate. Additionally, because they are clearly documented, some of these tasks are now easier to assign to research or other assistants.
I sometimes hear from scholars that this systematic structure is too rigid and managerial or “takes too much time.”
But SOPs aren’t about mechanizing your scholarship or stripping away the creative dimensions of what you do. They’re fundamentally about care—care for yourself, your finite energy, and the quality of attention you can bring to work that truly requires your expertise. They acknowledge that your cognitive resources are limited and valuable and that you shouldn’t have to burn through them on procedural tasks that can be made genuinely routine.
SOPs also save a lot of time and energy once they are in place.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, start small rather than trying to systematize everything at once. Pick one specific task that consistently feels more draining than it should be. The next time you work through it, document the steps as you go—that becomes your first SOP, imperfect but immediately useful.
You don’t need an elaborate system or perfect documentation. You just need fewer decisions standing between you and the work that genuinely matters.