The reverse outline ended up being a useful technique, even when I questioned the clarity of my own thoughts. In fact, while I was writing the literature review, my thoughts seemed to be organizing themselves as I wrote, but I questioned whether what I was thinking would come across clearly to my readers. The technique of reverse outlining brought my thoughts back to what my paragraphs meant, as opposed to what I meant to say, which is what happens when someone reads a written piece. Each section would be reduced to a single thought that could be assessed for whether it supported my thesis.

The most significant breakthrough came from recognizing redundancy and drift. Certain points were repeating the same message with regard to the matter of social influence, as well as social marketing, with no significant details to add. Reverse outlining assisted me in recognizing redundancy, ensuring a purpose is given to such points.

At first, the tool did not assist me directly. The process of organizing burgeoning thoughts into clean bullet points seemed limiting. Its usefulness only became apparent once I had a full draft written and had to refactor it.

In the future, I would use the reverse outline more judiciously, rather than on every assignment as I did here. The reverse outline is best used on longer types of writing, such as literature reviews, research papers, or essays that quote multiple sources and need a more robust, complex thesis statement. In the future, I would complete a reverse outline on a complete draft, to check that every paragraph developing a thesis has a strong point to make, as well as to check the readability of the text.

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