What I have done today:

1. Check email - three minutes.

2. Discuss Christmas holiday arrangement with colleague - two minutes.

3. Try to come up with a catchy title for a presentation: three hours, seven minutes.

This is the hardest thing about academia (easiest thing about academia: the spa days). What I want is about six words that suggests that my paper is both thrilling, yet insightful; meticulously researched, but definitely with car chases. The first problem is that my paper is on the labour market in the UK over the last thirty years - what jobs are disappearing (middle jobs income, routine task based occupations), why they are disappearing (computerisation) and where people doing them end up (words to do with mobility). This is not prime material for a catchy pun (play on words). In desperation, I tried to think of a song lyric or expression that might be tangentially related to this and what I discovered is that all of them have been used. A lot.

First attempt: "Stuck in the middle?" - a reference to noted popular music song 'Stuck in the middle'. This yields about 7000 results in Google scholar, ranging from the predicable (political science papers on countries bordering Russia and West Europe, sociological studies of middle management) to the less predictable (an article in a journal called, intriguingly, Fire Engineering) . I also found a paper called, "Tax Neutrality to the Left, International Competitiveness to the Right, Stuck in the Middle with Subpart F" (Keith Engel, if you ever Google your own paper titles, and I currently assume that you definitely do: Holla).

Second attempt: "Dude, where's my" and then something. There are 300 papers which are called, "Dude, where's my" and then something. Dude, where's my phenotype? Dude, where's my paradigm? Dude, where's my corn (possible subtitle: where's my corn, dude?). Even, Dude, where's my Black Studies Department? This is an actual book, although it may also be a page on Yahoo Questions.

Increasingly desperate attempts three onwards: "The more things change, the more they stay the same" - 3000 hits on Google Scholar (Including 'The use of popular cliches in academic paper titles: the more things change, the more they stay the same'). Next, "Moving on up" - 1200 hits on Google Scholar ("Movin' on up" has 600 hits, which tells me that for every three academics who have heard the music of M:People, two thought they could have been better). Finally, "Where have all the flowers gone? (where flowers are workers in routine task-based occupations and similar)" - no hits on Google Scholar, several hits on keyboard with own head.

So, anyway, this is the net result of my morning's work. Two paper titles. Firstly: The route out of the routine: jobs, wages and mobility in a polarising labour market. I love the 'interesting title: tedious exposition' format for academic papers. I want to write a paper called 'Punch in the balls: a study of fruit drinks at formal dinner and dance events'. The second one is called: "Calling time on the hourglass economy". Oh, by the way, there's a thing called the hourglass economy hypothesis, and I'm disputing it's importance. This is why this is clever. Both are original. Most importantly, if either are ever Googled by an up-and-coming young academic looking for ideas for a title of a new paper they will now see a link to this post. And, if they continue reading, they will also see this:

THESE TITLES ARE TAKEN. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING THEM. THINK OF SOMETHING ELSE.

AND, YES, THAT ALSO APPLIES TO THE FRUIT DRINK ONE.