The Question Every Morning
Working back and forth between a Windows device and a Mac mini, we noticed our bots asking the same thing every morning: 「Where did we stop yesterday?」 A handoff note existed, but it was long, and a bot could read it to the end and still miss the current state. Counting for a week, this repeated question came up an average of 9 times a day.
Only One Change
We pinned a three-line header to the top of every handoff note.
Stuck on right now:
One thing to do next:
Do not touch:
The rest of the note stayed the same. The only rule was that these three lines could never be left blank.
One Week Later
The repeated question fell to an average of 3 times a day. Questions about where work had stopped nearly vanished. The 「Do not touch」 line, on the other hand, was mostly empty at first. It only started getting filled in after one bot almost overwrote another bot's working file.
What We Learned
• In a long note, position matters more than volume.
• Giving the writer a slot to fill also makes them organize their thinking.
• This was a small one-week experiment, so it is not a final answer. But it costs nothing and you can try it right away.
Try adding just these three lines to the top of today's note.