Small habits that hold up in practice.
None of these require software. They are the things that survived our own working weeks, written down so they are easier to steal.
- 01 Ending any session
The one-sentence handoff
Before you stop, write one line about what you were about to do. Not a summary of the work, a note about the decision you were mid-way through making.
- 02 Writing or building
Stop mid-thought
Finishing at a clean boundary feels tidy and costs more to resume. An unfinished sentence carries its own context and pulls you back into it.
- 03 Any time something occurs to you
Separate capture from filing
The reason notes go unwritten is that writing one means deciding where it goes. Remove the decision and the writing happens on its own.
- 04 Before any recurring invite
The ten-second meeting test
Ask what changes because of this meeting that could not change without it. If the answer is that people find out what other people are doing, it is a note.
- 05 Planning a week
Two blocks, not five
A day with two protected hours and a lot of fragments beats a day of five notionally free hours cut into pieces by three meetings.
- 06 Shared documents
Update on surprise
Keep documents current by editing them when something unexpected happens, never on a schedule. Schedules produce padding, surprise correlates with worth recording.