Lately, I've begun to believe that instead of trying to become proficient at things they're clearly not good at, people should try to leverage the things that they are good at in order to make up the gap. (This is based on a lot of evidence that shows that if you're not already good at something, even intense study will yield only marginal improvement.)
It just occurred to me, though, that by trying so hard to outline, that's exactly what I'm doing--I'm playing to my weaknesses instead of to my strengths. The reason I want to outline is so that I don't waste a bunch of time and energy writing something when I'm just going to have to go back and write a whole bunch of new/additional/substitute stuff anyway, yet generating text quickly is actually what I'm good at. So why have I been trying to outline, which I'm not good at, in order to avoid having to create more text, which I am good at?
It's because I have an efficiency compulsion, that's why. But I'm going to try abandoning it and just writing.
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