How much to read
When I finished my PhD, I think I had something like an 18" stack of papers I was still meaning to read. It had caused me a near-daily pang of stress and, if I’m honest, shame for years. My postdoc was even worse. I currently have several thousand papers in my Paperpile, but I feel a lot better because I’ve … learned how to read (ha).
I used to tell myself I should aim for n papers/week. Here’s what I tell my lab and myself now:
You'll read at different rates in different phases of your training and in different phases of each project.
First year: Read everything you need to prepare for qualifying exams. Read broadly and deeply. This is some of the most important reading you'll do, because it's helping you learn how to write. Do not skim or use AI for summaries. You're learning how different people think about the big questions in your field. Try to read at a steady pace, e.g., a few papers per day. The reading will be slow because you're probably encountering a high diversity of papers. You'll often not have much choice in what you read, but try to follow your curiosity when you can, and get in the habit of challenging yourself with ‘tough’ papers.
Thesis or grant proposal writing: You'll read with more focus on specific areas. Your goal is to understand what has and hasn't been done ("the state of the field") and how different groups are defining the problems you care about. You'll read some papers deeply and others more lightly, depending on how directly related they are to your problem. You'll probably want to spend most of your time reading during the period you're writing your thesis proposal. This again is invaluable education in understanding what people in your subfield think is important, obvious, contentious, etc., and understanding the weight of the evidence behind claims.
Set up citation alerts for the key papers that influence your work, so you know when potentially relevant new things have been published. You'll want to review these articles weekly, probably. Not all will need in depth reading. You might set up additional alerts for specific keywords or labs.
As your research direction evolves and before you start a new project, you'll want to do a deep dive of focused reading for at least a few days or weeks to make sure you are caught up. You might update your citation alerts.
Periodically you should read stuff that's not directly related to the work you're doing. Initially, classes and seminars might provide this contrast, but you might later schedule a day per semester or a few days after you submit a manuscript to read more widely.
I think for people in theory or methods, the challenge of what to read is especially hard, because we hope to derive creative insight from really different things. Each new, unread paper can feel like a lottery ticket. It's important to recognize the need to balance time reading with time to play and “do.” For instance, instead of reading your 15th paper on a topic, you might start investigating what your data actually show, or just start writing down a model and see what it does. In my first year of grad school, I know I read as a form of procrastination from analyses that intimidated me, and my confidence would’ve been improved by more balance. But I’ve also seen so many times… and made this mistake once myself!… people investing months or years of work into a project only to learn later that someone else did almost the same study 10 (or in one case 50!) years before. That can be really embarrassing.
Knowing the literature well in your “area” builds a confidence that’s hard to replicate any other way. As you understand what has been attempted already, it will be very easy to identify excellent research directions. A drawback is that you can get really annoyed when less informed peers start claiming unearned novelty.
As a professor, I aim for ~8 h of reading per week (including peer review), but it varies. I know some professors who don’t read much at all, and frankly, it shows.