How to balance project tasks with finishing old work and how many publications should one have as an early career PostDoc? I recently finished my dissertation, and now have a PostDoc position in a relatively large project for the next two years, with good chances of being extended into the next phase. The position is fairly technical (simulation method development), and I am trying to find time "on the side" to finish publishing the studies that went into my dissertation, in order to demonstrate that I wish to remain in active research, rather than just model development.

I was curious if I could gain some advice or insight on the following problems:


How can I balance new project tasks with finishing old work?
How many papers would be considered "normal" shortly after finishing a PhD?


I'm aware that this question is likely to be difficult to generalize, as publication count and time are very field-specific (I work as a climate modeller), but I'd nevertheless welcome some hints.
I am a researcher in a related field.

Some general answers to your questions, which was advised to me when I was in a very similar situation.


To maintain a balance, it depends if there are 'cross overs' in your prior and current research. If there is very little or none, then you could do what I do, I set some time every alternate weekend and a couple of evenings every so often - depending on what is needed for the research.
One way to tell how many papers would be considered 'normal' - or rather, a representative amount of papers, would be to do a search on Google Scholar or similar - of particular authors in your field, in specific years.