Hemingway Bridge: The Ultimate Productivity Secret
Originally published October 18, 2023
The typical day of a 9-5er is spent jumping from meeting to meeting, task to task, with only small pockets of working time.
That’s a lot of time lost due to context switching.
Not to mention, a lot of lost productivity...
When this is how your day is structured, you’ll quickly find yourself working late into the evening or on weekends just trying to keep up.
Not to mention the mental toll context-switching can take leaving you overwhelmed and guilty about not getting enough done.
Luckily, there is a surefire way to counteract this reality of corporate life. And no, it’s not quitting your job, selling all your possessions, and living out your remaining days farming the land in the middle of nowhere (don’t tell me you haven’t had that fantasy at the end of another 60-hour workweek…)
The best way to manage your corporate schedule is to master the art of note-taking.
My favorite note-taking technique?
The Hemingway Bridge.
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.
Before ending any working session, make a note of what you need to accomplish or where you want to start when you come back to the task.
The method is a concept inspired by writer Ernest Hemingway which I first learned about in Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte.
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 your day-to-day working tasks.
This simple method helps you maintain momentum in your work so you don’t waste precious time context-switching between unfinished tasks. You can easily pick up right where you left off.
How to Use the Hemingway Bridge
There are four types of notes you can leave yourself as part of practicing the Hemingway Bridge:
1. Next Steps
2. Roadblocks
3. Intentions
4. Final Thoughts
Let’s dive into each of these with some real-life examples.
#1 Next Steps:
Next Steps refer to the immediate next actions you need to take to get to the finish line of your project or task.
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 meeting notes.
Your Hemingway Bridge notes might look like this:
Send meeting notes to team
Talk to creative team about the potential new project scope
Grab content from your last proposal that could be reused for this proposal
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, you aren’t able to get a project over the finish line because you run into an unexpected problem or roadblock that will 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 it at the moment.
In this case, before you move on, write down what you are seeing and what you will need to troubleshoot when you have time.
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 the formulas are accurate.
When you get back to this task later in the day or week, you don’t have to go through the frustration of this roadblock all over again as you try to remember where exactly you were seeing the error. Instead, you can go straight to problem-solving mode since you’ll 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 need to do. This will help you avoid time wasted due to unclear directions or indecision.
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 benefit from.
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 well and what didn’t work so well. Your next event will be even better and you will have saved plenty of mental energy trying to remember specifics about the previous event. Your Hemingway Bridge to the rescue!
Note-taking in the Age of AI
AI has certainly transformed how we take notes.
With numerous tools that can capture and summarize what’s being said in a meeting or the important points of an article or document, it can lead you to question…
Does the art of note-taking with the Hemingway Bridge still have a place in the age of AI?
Unarguably… YES!
Your human insights are still vital to bring context to your notes.
It’s this human element that makes connections between the massive stream of information you process every day.
No AI knows exactly what you’re thinking and how you’re interpreting the world around you (not yet anyway…)
So even if you are leveraging AI tools to do the heavy lifting, the short time investment of adding some Hemingway Bridge notes to your work will go a long way in keeping you productive and sane.
Hemingway Bridge…So What?
The Hemingway Bridge method is invaluable in helping you transition throughout the day.
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 task 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 actually stick with), not nights or weekends required. Learn more here.
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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.
