The rule I use in revision workshops is simple: revise first, then edit. Both activities change words on a page, but revision reconsiders the argument while editing addresses sentence-level correctness. Combining them often means polishing sentences that will later be deleted.
The distinction that matters is between higher-order and lower-order concerns. Higher-order: does the argument hold? Lower-order: are the citations clean? Work through higher-order concerns before touching the small stuff. This feels inefficient when you’re tired of a draft and want to feel like you’re fixing something. Over the course of a writing project, it saves time.
One of the most useful tools I’ve found for revision is the reverse outline: after you’ve written a draft, go paragraph by paragraph and write one sentence describing what each paragraph actually does. Not what you intended it to do. What it does. You can see quickly whether paragraphs are out of order, doing too many things, or leaving a gap in the logic. Most people outline before they write. The Reverse outline is for after, when you have real text to evaluate.
Revision can stop when a colleague can accurately summarize the argument, when the same small word changes begin to repeat, or when only lower-order concerns remain. At that point, the draft is doing its job.