In today’s era of knowledge work, we create knowledge-based artifacts. Presentations, technical papers, proposals, and documents all need to be created. Quite often, these require a focused effort, from planning the outline to telling the story in the proper flow, leading to the final version of the document which evolves from multiple draft copies. Even though the final product may just be a few slides or pages, it can still require hours to create, with effort spanning a few days. So, the challenge quite often becomes: How do you get into the zone every time you start working on it? How do you avoid losing an idea while creating it?

Enter the solution: Build a Hemingway Bridge. I learned about this concept from the book Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. The idea is simple: Lay out the outline, write down your current progress, and note the next steps. Next steps are especially important if you are interrupted by some other piece of work or simply planning to resume working the next day. The next steps build a virtual bridge into tomorrow, allowing you to transition easily.

Try this out: At the top of your document, create a commented section with the “Outline of the work” and “Current steps.” When you are closing the session/file, simply write down the “Next steps.”

Do let me know if it works out for you!