system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How to deal with a PI that just won't do tasks?

I'm a postdoc in a biology lab of a big university. My PI is, of course, incredibly busy and has many demands on her time. However, I wrote a review article and gave her a basically completed draft ready to submit 5 months ago and she just won't read it. I send her reminders, she doesn't respond. I bring it up in person, she smiles and says "it's top of my list". At this point, it's really impacting my motivation and honestly hurting my career. I'm doing okay in the lab in terms of papers, but I can't help but think how much better we could all be doing if she didn't retard things by being so slow.

How would people deal with this situation. Obviously I can't force her to read it and sign off. But I do need her to submit it, I need her for future work and letters of rec etc. etc.

Would a frank email explaining how much this is impacting me work? I know it's only a review article, but I'll be entering the academic job market in a few months and every paper will help.

Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated.
gpt
This is just commiserating and is likely not helpful, but a friend of mine had something similar during his PhD. His supervisor had a ready-to-go paper on his desk for a year (**a year!**). It definitely affected his work with his supervisor and his work ethic generally. He tried everything to get his supervisor to do it but nothing helped. Eventually he just sent his supervisor an email that he was going to submit it on a certain date, and he'd need feedback by then. The supervisor didn't give any feedback, he submitted anyway, and the paper is now published.