The cost of starting over.
Some of the hardest work in a day is remembering the work you had already done.
Where in your day do you spend effort finding your way back to a decision?
You were just here
You open a case, compare two possibilities and begin a reply. Then the phone rings. When you return, the list has refreshed, your place has moved and the draft is gone. The original task still looks small. The effort you already gave it has become invisible.
This is an imagined scene, though its shape may feel familiar. Work interrupted halfway through leaves a little reconstruction job: find the item, remember the comparison, recover the reason, start writing again. A design review can miss that job if it only follows a clean path from beginning to end.
Design for the return
A useful return point preserves enough of the earlier context to help someone continue. The selected case stays selected. A draft survives a routine navigation. New information is visible alongside the facts it changed. If a saved choice has become unsuitable, the explanation remains close enough to understand why.
Continuity also needs care. An old draft should not silently act on a changed situation. Keeping someone's work and asking them to review a relevant change can happen together. The person gets to keep their thinking while the interface makes the new facts clear.
Try the interruption test
Choose a fictional example in a tool you are reviewing. Stop halfway through it. Open something else. Return through the path a colleague would actually use. Notice the first question you have to answer: where was I, what changed, or what was I about to do? That question points to a possible improvement.
The same test works beyond software. A shift note, a shared document or a paper checklist can leave a clear place to resume. Good work often happens across several attempts. Giving those attempts a thread to follow is a practical way to respect someone's attention.
Preserve a useful return point whenever work is interrupted.
Where in your day do you spend effort finding your way back to a decision?
Download the thought card