Write a one-minute ready-to-resume note before every task…

When This Fires

• Switching from deep work to a meeting or shallow work block
• Being interrupted during focused work (write the note before engaging with the interruption)
• Ending the workday with unfinished tasks
• Any forced context switch where you'll need to return to the current task later

Common Failure Mode

Switching tasks and telling yourself "I'll remember where I was." You won't — or rather, you'll remember a degraded version that costs 10-15 minutes to reconstruct. The one-minute note prevents the 15-minute re-loading cost. This is a 15:1 return on a trivially small investment. The other failure mode: writing a note so vague it doesn't actually help ("keep working on the API thing").

The Protocol

Before switching from any unfinished task, write three things: (1) Where I stopped: the specific point in the work (file, line, section, step). (2) What's unresolved: the open question or problem you were working through. (3) Next action: the exact first thing you'll do when you return ("write the test for the edge case where input is null"). Place the note where you'll see it when you return to the task. Total time: 60 seconds.