Shutdown Routine
Closes the day's open loops in writing, so tomorrow starts from a plan rather than from reconstruction.
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Running it, start to finish
- Capture every open loop in writing, vague ones included.
- Write the specific next action while you still have the context.
- Mark the end of the day with a closing act.
What you get back
The output this produces, every time.
- Writes the specific next action while you still have the context, saving tomorrow's reconstruction.
- Captures the vague open loops, which are the ones that intrude in the evening.
- Decides tomorrow's three today, when you know how today actually went.
Getting better results
Where this usually goes wrong, and how to avoid it.
- Write the next action, not the task. 'Continue the report' means nothing tomorrow. The actual next sentence or step is what removes the twenty-minute restart.
- Include the vague loops. The half-thought worry is the one that intrudes at 9pm. Writing it down is what stops it.
- Keep the bad-day version. Ten minutes will not happen on a busy day. The two-minute version is the handoff alone, which pays for the whole routine.
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Written for The AI University. Every prompt in this library is original work — authored, tested and revised here, not collected from elsewhere. 365 of them, free with an account.