I learned this concept from the book Start Finishing. The author noticed how it takes us so long to jump back in a project when we leave it for a while, for example for the weekend or when we need to pause it for some reason. Instead, he recommends writing the exact steps you need to follow next time you start working on this project:

Here are some ways to leave yourself bread crumbs:

• At the end of a work session — which may be the end of one focus block or the end of the last of back-to-back focus blocks — leave a quick note to yourself about where to pick up.
• If you were truly in flow and lost track of time, your fallback time to leave yourself bread crumbs is at the end of the day. While it’s not as optimal as at the end of the working session, it’s better than starting cold the next morning or at your first focus block of the day.
• Consider using author Ernest Hemingway’s trick of stopping before you’re empty and leaving something easy to start with. You want it to be easy enough that it doesn’t take a lot of brainpower but difficult enough that you have to engage with it.

I try to write bread crumbs every time I quit working on an excel sheet, either for a break, or due to some kind of interruption, and definitely as part of my workday shutdown ritual.

Bread crumbs for excel sheet analysis may look like this:
1. Filter on Date in column A
2. Compare with Dates in column B via lookup
3. Update graph A

These are your bread crumbs back into focus. Such steps reduce the friction that delays getting started on a task, you no more need to remember where you left off. All you need is to read your bread crumbs.

David Kadavy in his book Mind Management not Time Management recommends a technique he calls “Sloppy Operating Procedures” for tasks you only do periodically. Examples in work life could be a monthly report or a quarterly analysis. He called them sloppy because he thought standard operating procedures were too rigid for his creative process. Sloppy or standard, just try it. Write the steps you need to perform in order to complete those regular but not daily tasks.

I tried this for my podcast production process when they were only published monthly, example steps:

1. Write script or key points
2. Record the episode (preferably a few hours later or the next day so I would better digest the ideas).
3. Edit the Episode.
4. Add the intro and exit clips.
5. Export to mp3.
6. Cut a 60 seconds clip for the promo.
7. Write the show notes.
8. Publish.

Try this at work, it will save you so much time. Never close an unfinished document before writing what to do specifically next time you get to it. Starting work is effortless this way.

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Here is this topic in my podcast (Arabic):