"I have so many thoughts and not enough time to think them," I recently blurted out to my husband. For me, "thinking thoughts" means scribbling notes or writing messy paragraphs about whatever is on my mind. Of course, no one wants to read my scribbles or suffer through my unrefined musings. So once I've spent some time thinking thoughts, I have to figure out how to organize them. To structure them. To narrate them.

That's what today's episode is all about. Whether or not you're a writer, content creator, or other media maker, I know that thinking thoughts and figuring out how to share them is important to you—and essential to your work.

Footnotes:

Read the essay version of this episode.
The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han
Related: "Temporal Bandwidth" by Tara McMullin (EP 489)
Related: "An Ode to Exceedingly Complex Systems" by Tara McMullin (EP 480)

NEW: The Return of Summer Seminar

Summer Seminar is an intellectual oasis for creative thinkers and curious adventurers.

It combines speculative fiction, big questions, and practical application. For Summer 2025, we’re reading Sofia Samatar’s critically acclaimed novella The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain.

We’ll pair it with adventures in systems thinking and cultural analysis. And we’ll apply what we discover by reflecting on the systems we create and encounter in our own lives and work.

Summer Seminar is designed to fit into any schedule and explores critical thinking skills you can apply to any goal or challenge.

To learn more, visit whatworks.fyi/summer

(Today's episode is a significant revision of a piece I previously wrote for premium subscribers in April 2024.)

(00:00) - EP 494: How Structure Transforms Ideas
(22:37) - Credits

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