There are two myths I encounter constantly in writing workshops. One is the cleared-deck fantasy: the idea that you can’t start writing until everything else is sorted: the reading is done, the semester has quieted, the calendar has opened up. The other is the magnum opus fallacy: the belief that your writing must be important enough to justify the time it takes. Both are protection strategies. They protect you from a draft that might not be good, which is the only kind of draft that leads anywhere.
Perfectionism during drafting is a category error. You’re applying evaluation criteria to something not yet ready to be evaluated. A first draft’s job isn’t to be good. Its job is to exist so that revision can happen. The trouble is that most academic writers have strong evaluation instincts: they’re high achievers, often with a lot at stake. Those instincts fire at exactly the wrong moment, during drafting, when their job is to stay quiet.
The practical approach I’ve found most useful is setting explicit criteria before starting a section. Not “write a great introduction” but “write an introduction that states the argument and previews three main points.” Meet those criteria. Stop. Move on. The criteria give you a legitimate reason to put the draft down, which the perfectionist brain otherwise won’t provide. That brain will always find one more thing to refine. A specific target you’ve reached is how you get out from under it.
The other side of this is knowing when to stop revising. There’s a point at which the argument is as clear as it’s going to get before it goes out to readers. Perfectionism reframes this endpoint as abandonment: the draft is never finished, only given up on. I’d rather people think of it differently: the draft is ready when it does its job. Not every possible job. Not when it’s immune to criticism. When it does its job. The distinction between those is the one the block is usually protecting you from having to make.