Hemingway Bridge: 4 Ways to Increase Your Productivity
Originally published October 18, 2023
Is your work productivity lacking?
The typical 9-5 day involves frantically jumping from task to task and meeting to meeting.
You spend most of your day context-switching and barely able to keep up with what it is you actually need to get done. So you end the day completely exhausted and overwhelmed, yet wildly unproductive.
Enough.
It’s time to feel a little more accomplished no matter how crazy the day.
Enter the Hemingway Bridge.
The Hemingway Bridge method is a concept inspired by writer Ernest Hemingway which I first learned about in Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte.
The method is used to help you maintain momentum so you can accomplish projects more efficiently and increase your overall productivity.
Read on to learn what exactly the Hemingway Bridge is and four ways you can start using the concept in your daily work.
What is the Hemingway Bridge?
The idea of the Hemingway Bridge is to stop working only when you know what the next step will be.
End with the start in mind.
I.e. Don’t stop working on a specific project until you know exactly what you will do when you pick it back up.
While the concept was created for use in the writing world to help avoid writer’s block (you know…Hemingway and all…), it has a broader application to our day-to-day working tasks.
This method allows you to capitalize on the momentum you have when you’re knee-deep in a project. You can avoid starting from scratch even after pausing to jump to a meeting or to wrap up your day.
The Hemingway Bridge is especially useful for projects that you need to come and go from. Projects where there are multiple meetings and working sessions to get to the final result.
This can be a huge time saver and productivity booster as you’ll always know exactly where to start as soon as you get back to work.
Say goodbye to the days of wasting time scrambling through messy notes or asking colleagues if they remember where things stand. You’ll always have the answer right at your fingertips.
I think I get it… But, how will this method increase my productivity?
Most of us spend the day jumping between meetings and projects and unexpected distractions. We aren’t graced with an empty 8 hours laid before us that we can dedicate to a single topic.
That’s the reality of most corporate schedules.
Leveraging the Hemingway Bridge means you can break your work into manageable segments while maintaining momentum and allowing for a smoother transition between projects and topics.
Here’s how to use the Hemingway Bridge:
Before wrapping up a working session, jot down quick notes of where you want to start when you have time to pick the project back up.
This could include notes such as:
Next steps
Roadblocks you need to resolve
Intentions for your next working session
Final thoughts
Let’s examine each of these with some real-life examples.
#1 Next Steps:
Next steps refer to the immediate next actions you need to take to continue to work toward the finish line.
Real-Life Example: Client meeting reviewing a potential partnership
When the client meeting wraps, before moving to your next meeting or task, write down the next steps at the bottom of your notes.
Your Hemingway Bridge notes might look like this:
Send meeting notes to team
Talk to creative team about project scope for proposal
Research similar projects to pull content from
Compile questions for client about the project specifics and schedule follow-up meeting
When you’re ready to take action on the information from the meeting, you know exactly where to start. You also have a list to help delegate tasks to the appropriate team members.
#2 Roadblocks:
Often, we aren’t able to get a project over the finish line because we run into an unexpected problem or roadblock that is going to take additional time to resolve.
Real-Life Example: Creating a quarterly earnings report
When working on the report, you run into a calculation error. But, the next meeting is beckoning and you don’t have time to resolve in the moment.
In this case, before you move on, write down what you are seeing and what you will need to jump into when you have time to resolve the issue.
Your Hemingway Bridge note might look like this:
Rows J-K aren’t calculating the total correctly. Need to look into the ‘Totals’ tab to confirm formulas are accurate.
When you pick back up this project, you don’t have to go through the frustration all over again of the roadblock you ran into, trying to remember where exactly you were seeing the error, and derailing your productivity. Instead, you can go straight to problem-solving mode and will know exactly where to start your investigation.
#3 Intentions:
Knowing your intentions for your next working session will give future you laser focus on what you want to accomplish. This will help you avoid wasted time with unclear direction.
Real-Life Example: Creating a presentation for a client pitch
In this scenario, you’re nearly wrapped up with the presentation – you have all your slides created and talking points ready. But you plan to come back to the presentation for a final walk-through.
Earlier in the day you read an article about weaving storytelling into presentations and you’d like to apply the concept.
Your Hemingway Bridge notes might look like this:
Review storytelling article <include link to article and/or your notes> and refine slides and script to use this approach.
In your next working session, you can jump right into the storytelling article to refresh your brain on the concepts (or, better yet, review any notes you already took on the contents of the article) and get right to your final presentation review with the goals and lens you already defined.
#4 Final Thoughts:
There are many working sessions that truly are the final session (hurray for another project complete!). In this case, don’t wrap up all your hard work without providing a little nugget for your future self to be able to learn from the project.
Real-Life Example: Annual leadership event
The event is complete and attendees are scurrying back to their desks, notepads full of ‘a-ha’ moments, and likely a mountain of unread emails to attend to. It’s time to get back to business as usual.
But, before officially calling it quits on another event in the books, write down your final thoughts on what went well and what you may have done differently.
Your Hemingway Bridge notes might look like this:
The venue needed more areas to support breakout sessions
The team liked the combo of external speakers alongside internal department sessions
Setting up a video conference would have increased attendance for those unable to attend in person
A more detailed agenda would have helped keep sessions to their allotted time
Now, the next time you need to coordinate a similar event, you have an idea of what worked and what didn’t work so you can continually improve and learn from previous experiences. You can also save plenty of mental energy trying to remember specifics about the previous event. Your Hemingway Bridge to the rescue!
Hemingway Bridge Conclusion
The Hemingway Bridge method can be a lifesaver in helping you transition more smoothly between projects. You can counter the inevitable need to constantly switch gears without losing momentum and hurting your productivity.
The simple tactics of Hemingway Bridge notes also help you dive back into work with less resistance. This can reduce procrastination since resuming work on a project will be more effortless.
So before you pause and jump to a new task, jot down those Hemingway Bridge notes. Your future self is thanking you!
If you’re looking for more ways to increase your productivity so you can spend less time working and more time living, check out my Never Work Overtime Again course. You’ll learn how to create a majorly productive schedule you can actually stick to, without working nights and weekends. Learn more!
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About Me
Hi, I’m Kara. I’m a former workaholic turned time-management expert. I help women stressed out in their 9-5 get more done, in less time, so they can get back in the driver’s seat and start living a life they love.
