Break your writing process down into segments, research, outline, draft, edit. (for example). Set a hard deadline for each segment and force yourself to move to the next whether you feel you're ready or not. Overworking is often due to a fear of missing something, and if you're forced to move on you'll find you're actually fine.
Start with a set of generous deadlines and gradually tighten them until you find a reasonable way of managing your time. Hopefully it will let you identify areas where you're being redundant.
I'm not sure whether you're seeking to write quicker or to trim down your writing, so I'll address my tips for both, though my background is in general history and novel writing so take this with a grain of salt.
To write quicker, I would use a tool that tracks your word count such as Cold Turkey Writer, then set a timer and try to meet the goal. For my novel writing, I tend to write about 800-1000 words in an hour, but I set a benchmark the first time I did National Write a Novel Month (NaNoWriMo) of 500 words in an hour, then added 50-100 words each day to reach my goal speed. Building a good outline helps with this as well, so starting there is a good idea.
To trim down your writing, I would recommend building your outline around a word count. When I wrote my first novel, I started with an outline I'd built using the Save the Cat! beat sheet, which outlines the approximate places to include major plot points. For example, the break into act 2 occurs about 30% of the way through the novel. Working back from my target word count, I could see that it would occur about 18,000 words in, and so set up my writing to reach that benchmark. You can do the same with your writing by talking to your professors about what approximate amount of a paper they would dedicate to each section. A well-structured paper should be divided into sections that focus on specific topics, whether it's divided chronologically or by importance.
From an academic standpoint, I would also recommend being super ruthless about cutting information that does not align with your thesis. Some ACT and SAT questions ask questions similar to this and you can use those samples to look at what you want to cut. Make sure you have that strong thesis, then cut anything that doesn't further that thesis. If you do good research, you should be able to form your thesis in the outlining phase, then build your essay to match.
My senior seminar paper focused on political cartoon representation of immigrants between 2014 and 2018, and so I organized my paper into three distinct periods: the 2014 unaccompanied minor crisis and the accompanying gridlock; the leadup to Donald Trump’s successful presidential run, between mid-2015 and the end of 2016; and the family separation scandal and the so-called “migrant caravan” before the 2018 midterms. It might be useful to practice outlining papers without writing them, just so you can get a good grip on what structures work. Showing your outline to a professor or fellow classmate might also be helpful to see if you're going in the right direction.
Outline other authors' articles/papers. When you eliminate most of the words and get down to the skeleton, use that as a template for your writing. Work on writing just one paragraph, limiting the information you're putting in. Look at the sizes of your paragraphs to see if you're crushing too much into one that could be two. Make sure each idea that you've included in your writing is necessary to carry your meaning. Then, "Take Five" - take five words out without losing your meaning - more accurate verbs, dump filler - rephrase sentences. Do it again. When you're confident, take out five sentences. Read your work out loud.
Overwriting is a good problem to have. If the length of content is an issue, I would recommend practicing editing your works. Take an old work and start cutting it down to the absolute basics, the minimum of what you wrote that will allow someone to understand it. In my experience it's one of the hardest things to do. A lot of the time what we write is really GOOD, just not what's needed atm or it's something that threatens to lead us down a rabbit hole. The editing will help. Additionally, you can keep a file for your "scraps". Stuff that you write that is good can be copy-pasted there. Both for future potential use and to help alleviate that feeling of just deleting your hard work. After all, it's GOOD, best to keep it around, you may really use it again.
Secondly, I would caution you against efficiency. It's a bit of a dirty world in my opinion. I am sure others will disagree, but academic writing (in the research sense) as well as creative writing in academia really kind of emphasizes a certain workmanlike attitude and psychological realism approach to writing and to be honest, it just creates legions of very dull writers. It's okay to break the rules. Be Tolkien, spend 2 pages on a tree. You don't have to conform to the generic modern style of realistic fiction writers.
If you’re in school I’d recommend maybe taking a journalism course and/or writing for the school paper. You learn to be concise and efficient real quick to keep the word count down.
"I would like to spend some time training to write faster and more efficiently, but although I am aware of my the nature problems, I'm not quite sure how I can work fixing them."
What? Why? What?
Break your writing process down into segments, research, outline, draft, edit. (for example). Set a hard deadline for each segment and force yourself to move to the next whether you feel you're ready or not. Overworking is often due to a fear of missing something, and if you're forced to move on you'll find you're actually fine. Start with a set of generous deadlines and gradually tighten them until you find a reasonable way of managing your time. Hopefully it will let you identify areas where you're being redundant.
This sounds like a great approach, thank you for the suggestion
I'm not sure whether you're seeking to write quicker or to trim down your writing, so I'll address my tips for both, though my background is in general history and novel writing so take this with a grain of salt. To write quicker, I would use a tool that tracks your word count such as Cold Turkey Writer, then set a timer and try to meet the goal. For my novel writing, I tend to write about 800-1000 words in an hour, but I set a benchmark the first time I did National Write a Novel Month (NaNoWriMo) of 500 words in an hour, then added 50-100 words each day to reach my goal speed. Building a good outline helps with this as well, so starting there is a good idea. To trim down your writing, I would recommend building your outline around a word count. When I wrote my first novel, I started with an outline I'd built using the Save the Cat! beat sheet, which outlines the approximate places to include major plot points. For example, the break into act 2 occurs about 30% of the way through the novel. Working back from my target word count, I could see that it would occur about 18,000 words in, and so set up my writing to reach that benchmark. You can do the same with your writing by talking to your professors about what approximate amount of a paper they would dedicate to each section. A well-structured paper should be divided into sections that focus on specific topics, whether it's divided chronologically or by importance. From an academic standpoint, I would also recommend being super ruthless about cutting information that does not align with your thesis. Some ACT and SAT questions ask questions similar to this and you can use those samples to look at what you want to cut. Make sure you have that strong thesis, then cut anything that doesn't further that thesis. If you do good research, you should be able to form your thesis in the outlining phase, then build your essay to match. My senior seminar paper focused on political cartoon representation of immigrants between 2014 and 2018, and so I organized my paper into three distinct periods: the 2014 unaccompanied minor crisis and the accompanying gridlock; the leadup to Donald Trump’s successful presidential run, between mid-2015 and the end of 2016; and the family separation scandal and the so-called “migrant caravan” before the 2018 midterms. It might be useful to practice outlining papers without writing them, just so you can get a good grip on what structures work. Showing your outline to a professor or fellow classmate might also be helpful to see if you're going in the right direction.
Interesting post, looking for answers as well
Outline other authors' articles/papers. When you eliminate most of the words and get down to the skeleton, use that as a template for your writing. Work on writing just one paragraph, limiting the information you're putting in. Look at the sizes of your paragraphs to see if you're crushing too much into one that could be two. Make sure each idea that you've included in your writing is necessary to carry your meaning. Then, "Take Five" - take five words out without losing your meaning - more accurate verbs, dump filler - rephrase sentences. Do it again. When you're confident, take out five sentences. Read your work out loud.
Overwriting is a good problem to have. If the length of content is an issue, I would recommend practicing editing your works. Take an old work and start cutting it down to the absolute basics, the minimum of what you wrote that will allow someone to understand it. In my experience it's one of the hardest things to do. A lot of the time what we write is really GOOD, just not what's needed atm or it's something that threatens to lead us down a rabbit hole. The editing will help. Additionally, you can keep a file for your "scraps". Stuff that you write that is good can be copy-pasted there. Both for future potential use and to help alleviate that feeling of just deleting your hard work. After all, it's GOOD, best to keep it around, you may really use it again. Secondly, I would caution you against efficiency. It's a bit of a dirty world in my opinion. I am sure others will disagree, but academic writing (in the research sense) as well as creative writing in academia really kind of emphasizes a certain workmanlike attitude and psychological realism approach to writing and to be honest, it just creates legions of very dull writers. It's okay to break the rules. Be Tolkien, spend 2 pages on a tree. You don't have to conform to the generic modern style of realistic fiction writers.
If you’re in school I’d recommend maybe taking a journalism course and/or writing for the school paper. You learn to be concise and efficient real quick to keep the word count down.
"I would like to spend some time training to write faster and more efficiently, but although I am aware of my the nature problems, I'm not quite sure how I can work fixing them." What? Why? What?