Applied Mere Economics: More Time With Your Kids Costs Less Than You Think
Here's a harsh reality: your marginal project- the "last in, first out" project on your to-do list or CV- probably isn't very good. I look back at my CV and see some papers the world wouldn't notice if they disappeared. Bad papers build the human capital you need to write better papers, but many "highly productive" academic CVs are probably like mine: there's wheat but too much chaff.
If you're already productive, think it possible you're leaving a bit of joy on the table by writing that next mediocre-to-bad paper instead of watching movies, playing video games, or building Lego sets with your kids. Successful academia selects for and rewards workaholism, but you might do better even by the standards of academic excellence by spending a little less time at your desk and a little more time on the Xbox. Yes, there are times when you need to say "no" to family and "yes" to work, but they're probably not as frequent as you think.
I'll put on four hats and explain:
Journal Editor/Referee Hat: I co-edit the Southern Economic Journal and do a lot of refereeing for journals like Public Choice, the Review of Austrian Economics, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (open access!), Journal of Private Enterprise (open access!), Independent Review (open access!), and Journal of Institutional Economics (now open access!). I regularly see papers the world won't miss if they're never published. If you're reading this, you probably have at least one paper in your pipeline that fits that description.
Promotion & Tenure Committee Chair Hat: I chaired the Brock School of Business Promotion & Tenure Committee a few years ago. There are diminishing marginal returns to papers beyond the institution's stated P&T requirements. If you've cleared the bar, it doesn't matter much whether you've cleared it by two papers or twenty. I suspect this is even more true if you're being evaluated by a committee that reads your papers instead of just counting them. If you've satisfied your institution's necessary conditions for promotion and tenure, having a few good papers is better than having a lot of bad ones.
External Tenure Reviewer Hat: I'll repeat: "If you've satisfied your institution's necessary conditions for promotion and tenure, having a few good papers is better than having a lot of bad ones."
Hiring Committee Hat: Your first published paper or two are great signals: they show that you can see a project through to completion and know how to get work done. There are sharp diminishing marginal returns that might eventually turn negative: your tenth published paper raises questions about whether you'll use your time wisely on the tenure track.
Of course, if all ten papers are in A journals on the ABDC Journal Quality List, keep up the good work and enjoy the great job you'll get at a distinguished research university. If all ten papers are in journals I have to look up to verify that they aren't predatory publication mills, then it's time to take a hard look at how you work.
This will look different for different people, and the question isn't "should you be prolific?" but "should you be a little more or a little less prolific?" If you're writing nothing, then get to work. If you're steadily producing good work, then think at the margin. It's easy to get swept up in the urgency of the moment, but you won't Perish if you don't Publish that meh paper you're on the fence about as long as you're regularly producing good work.
As you'll learn as you keep up with us, I'm a total Bryan Caplan fanboy and loved his 2011 Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. I've also learned a lot from my friend and mentor David Henderson, including his 2011 post "Just Say Yes" in which he explained how he "committed to [his] wife that when [his] daughter asked me to play with her, [he] would say yes at least 90% of the time." You'll screw up. You'll make mistakes. You'll have regrets. Occasionally, you'll spend too much time on one thing and not enough time on another. To err is human. However, when I look back over my time as a dad, I can't point at any time I spent with my kids and say, "that was a mistake; I should have said 'no' so I could work on a paper I still haven't finished."
To borrow the subtitle of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, "Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think." Given that you're probably overestimating the quality of that paper you feel guilty about leaving unwritten, you shouldn't feel bad about putting down your laptop and picking up the Legos.