Move outputs forward through pipeline stages…

When This Fires

• When producing any multi-stage output (articles, reports, proposals, presentations)
• When you notice oscillating between drafting and editing without making forward progress
• When outputs stay in "in progress" indefinitely because they never advance through stages
• Complements Separate creation and editing into different calendar… (creation-editing separation) and Three sequential editing passes for high-polish outputs (three-pass editing) with the pipeline discipline

Common Failure Mode

Perpetual redrafting: the output oscillates between Draft and Review endlessly. You draft, review, find problems, redraft, review again, find new problems, redraft again. Each cycle feels productive but the output never reaches Polish or Deliver. The constraint violation is the regression from Review back to Draft without an explicit decision.

The Protocol

(1) Define your pipeline stages: Draft → Review → Polish → Deliver (or your variant). (2) When working on an output, identify which stage it's in. Work only on activities appropriate to that stage (One cognitive mode per stage). (3) Advance to the next stage only when the current stage's gate criteria are met (Check 3-5 yes/no gate criteria at each pipeline stage…). (4) If review reveals a problem requiring regression to a prior stage, make it explicit: "I'm moving this back to Draft because [specific reason]." Document the reason. (5) Track regressions: if the same output regresses more than twice, the problem is likely upstream (unclear scope, missing input, wrong template) rather than in the current stage. Fix the root cause rather than continuing to oscillate.