Why I outline everything
When I changed my major to English, I had a lot of catching up to do. That meant that one of my semesters was all upper-level English classes and one upper-level philosophy class. I had a lot of writing that I needed to do, and not a lot of time to do it.
That's when I really fell in love with outlining.
Outlines let you move fast
One of the best pieces of advice that I heard was, "If you want to go faster, you have to know what to do next." This gem was from Neuro in the context of playing StarCraft II. In this case, he was talking about actions per minute (APM)—an in-game metric that is exactly what it sounds like.
But the same applies to writing. If you want to write quickly, you need to know where you are going next. The prolific Brandon Sanderson outlines extensively. Having a plan eliminates the downtime that happens when you don't know where you're going. You don't have to reorient yourself after every paragraph. Working out the structure of your argument ahead of time means that you don't need to restructure it throughout the process.
Outlines save you from detours
If you are writing anything significant, you won't be able to write it in one sitting. Losing your context is a bane to your writing. An outline is a tool that preserves your context. When you return to your writing, you'll be able to enter flow much more quickly.
Outlines reward you
Even if you don't have an outline, you have a de facto outline:
- Finish the whole thing
If that's your outline, you are only rewarded at the end of the process. However, if your outline is more robust like the one below:
Thesis: Your main argument
- Introduction
- Background
- Prior art #1 and its relevance
- Prior art #2 and its relevance
- Your argument
- Claim #1
- Claim #2
- Conclusion
You are rewarded for each item that you finish. It becomes a checklist.
Outlines in programming
Now that I am a programmer, I still outline my work. It's not anything sophisticated—I just write inline comments that keep me on track and help me stay focused. For larger projects, I'll move my outline into a text file and use that so I can make sure all the pieces are moving and working together.