Daily Inspiration Quote by Donald McKay

Starting with the ending and reverse-engineering the rest isn’t framed here as “wrong,” just needlessly self-handicapping. Donald McKay was a designer, which matters: designers live in the realm of constraints, sequencing, and assembly. You can tie your shoe with one hand, but you’ll feel every extra second and awkward contortion. The metaphor is practical, almost shop-floor wisdom, aimed at method rather than romance. It’s a warning against a certain kind of cleverness that mistakes limitation for rigor.

The line also quietly deflates the prestige of the “master plan.” Working backward can sound disciplined, like you’re the kind of person who knows exactly where you’re headed. McKay suggests the opposite: it can become a performance of control that actually reduces dexterity. Storytelling, like design, is iterative. You discover the shape by testing materials, revising seams, noticing where tension accumulates. If the ending is locked too early, the middle turns into connective tissue that exists to justify a predetermined finish. That’s when narratives start to feel “engineered” in the pejorative sense: motivation becomes mechanical, surprise becomes fake, and characters behave like delivery systems for plot.

Contextually, this has 19th-century craft logic behind it: the era’s designers and builders were grappling with industrial discipline while defending the intelligence of process. McKay’s intent is to re-center the value of flexibility. Not everything has to be a straight line to a conclusion; sometimes the best ending is the one earned by allowing both hands on the work.