It's not one of mine, waiting to be completed.
It's not from a competitor, scooping my precious results.
It doesn't even have much impact on my own work.
No it's a paper I once printed, and have heard about from others. It sits on my cluttered desk staring at me every day, and I just simply refuse to read it. Like an old rival we glimpse at each other every day, I pretend to ignore and it pretends to ignore me ... but the more I refuse to admit it's existence, the more it impose itself on my subconscious.
(and now with a Nobel given to the field ... this is obviously an important paper - if you see thetitleyou'll understand why)
So what is the title of this mysterious paper?
(Hey Evil Gomez, maybe you can write something on this in ScienceSampler???)
My philosophy has always been that printing a paper out and putting it in a pile on your desk is 95% as good as actually reading it.
Just carry it around in your bag for a few weeks, and the information contained therein will seep into your brain via your leg. Or back. Depending on what kind of bag you carry.
My method: print out a bunch of other papers and pile them on it. You will feel better (you will be refusing to tackle a daunting task, not a middle one), and the paper won't feel so lonely. By periodically adding new papers on the pile, you can also avoid the accumulation of visibly guilty dust.