Thinking away from the notes

On a typical day, [Terry] Gross is at the office from 8:45 to 5:45…Gross will continue working at home, preparing for the next day’s interview in the living room. She clarifies her thoughts first thing in the morning in the shower. That’s when she asks herself: What do I care about? What in all of this research is meaningful? It’s important to be away from her notes when she does this. She emerges from the shower with her ‘‘major destination points.’’ Then she goes to her office and refers back to her notes—sheafs of facts; dog-eared, marked-up books—for the details. Then she does the interview. And then she is inundated by the other daily tasks of running a radio show. The next day, she does it all again.

—Susan Burton, in The New York Times Magazine