LogoCésar Alberca
September 6, 2023 - 2 minutes

Hemingway Bridge

The famous and prolific novelist Ernest Hemingway came up with a mechanism to avoid writer's block. When he was about to finish a writing session, he would leave some room to write down his next steps, noting the point where he had left off, his major obstacles or difficulties in wrapping up a plot, or the most important open question to be resolved.

The idea is to provide multiple starting points for your future self, making it as easy as possible to pick up where you left off. This way of building bridges to the future is a very smart way to work, and you can even apply it to coding.

Instead of ending your programming session with a clean git status or all tests in green, you can try to conclude your session with a failing test for the next feature or refactor you want to tackle. This way, regaining context and focus will be easier when you return to it.