This podcast/article was a slap in the face...in a good way. As that person who procrastinates and copes with stress by spending more hours writing outlines for papers, making minute-by-minute schedules in my planner, and talking about what I have to do than actually doing it, I felt personally attacked by this idea of planning to start vs. planning to finish. For example, right now I am working on a thesis draft due Friday for which -surely enough- I wrote out an entire daily schedule that will give me 80 full pages by then...but I am unsurprisingly soooo far off track that it is almost comical.

The thing is, life happens. It is really hard for anyone to be 100% efficient and committed to a schedule- no matter how many factors you waste your time accounting for. So I'm actually not even sure why I continue to make these cookie-cutter schedules when I know they're not meant to be followed nor will they ever be.

One thing this podcast made me think of was a quote I encountered by (surprise surprise) Christopher Nolan in which he describes his thoughts on screenplays:

"I enjoy writing screenplays because they are very stripped-down, simple documents. And the more stripped down they are, the better they are. The less literary they are, the more they approximate the direct experience of what’s going to happen on-screen...Once you start pushing that cursor forward in a linear fashion, you’re very very trapped by that process until you finish. Until you get there, you’re trapped in the maze."

Thinking too linearly can hurt us - especially when it comes to creative endeavors like designing webpages, making films, and even writing papers. You have to leave room for spontaneity. This podcast was really healing for me, personally, and I'm really glad that I got to experience it while taking a break from the monotony of writing my thesis because it's just what I needed to hear in this moment. Thank you!