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

Why This Is a Rule

Attention residue (Leroy, 2009) is the cognitive cost of leaving a task unfinished: your brain continues processing the incomplete task in the background, consuming working memory capacity that the new task needs. The Zeigarnik effect amplifies this — unfinished tasks create open loops in memory that demand resolution.

A ready-to-resume note closes the loop externally. By specifying where you stopped, what's unresolved, and the next concrete action, you give your brain permission to release the incomplete task. The note becomes the external memory that your working memory was trying to hold. The specificity matters — "continue working on the feature" doesn't close the loop, but "implement the validation function starting at line 47, then run the test suite" does.

One minute is the budget. Longer notes become their own task and create resistance. The note doesn't need to be comprehensive — it needs to be specific enough that future-you can resume without re-loading context from scratch.

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.