All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

A plan on paper is always tidier than the thing it describes. Theory strips away weather, mood, fatigue and the hundred small facts that only turn up once you are standing in the middle of something. That is why the account of a life is thinner than the living of it, and why understanding gathered only from a distance stays a little pale.

Pick the question you have been researching and go touch it instead. One afternoon of actually doing the work will teach you more than another week of reading about it. Keep your plan, but let what happens revise it.