The Save Point

For the interruption — pulled away mid-thought, and the thread is gone.

For forty minutes it was all holding together. Then the phone rang, or someone called your name, and you looked back and it had vanished — not the task, the thread. The live arrangement of everything you were holding at once. Now you're re-reading, re-tracing, sitting at sixty per cent of where you were. The problem was never starting. It's re-entry.

The Save Point borrows the idea from video games: before you stop, you save your state — not just where you were, but what you were about to do and the one detail that pulls the rest back. A thirty-second ritual, three fixed prompts, same every time. No new document, no app.

What's inside:

• The three prompts — the next action, the open question, the single breadcrumb that reloads the rest
• A five-minute setup you do once
• Worked examples from a real day — admin, the school email, the call you can't defer
• The ten-second version for when you have no warning
• How to keep it from drifting into wallpaper

Instant PDF. Keep it on the fridge, in your notes, wherever you'll reach it first.

Part of the Protocol Collection — tools for demanding brains. A practical tool, not a treatment. For persistent difficulties, talking to a GP, therapist or counsellor is always the right call.