Interactive example · from Keeping a Vault
The idea mid-work
Oh wait, unrelated: idea for the newsletter, interview-format issues with one guest each. Don't lose that. Anyway, where were we on the migration?
A capture, arriving mid-task. What happens in the next ten seconds decides whether capturing stays free.
Pick the agent's next move, then see where it leads:
Uh, newsletter I guess? No tags. No outline. Can we get back to the migration?
Filed. But notice what just happened: the capture cost you three decisions and broke your focus on the migration. Next week, mid-task, you'll weigh that cost, and the idea after this one quietly won't get said.
A capture with a form: three questions taxed onto a passing thought. The price isn't this capture: it's every future thought that stays unsaid because capturing acquired friction.
That weekend: "process the inbox."
Four items. First: the newsletter interview idea. Propose promoting to active/newsletter/ as a note under the existing project, since issue #4 is unplanned and this could be it. Second item...
Capture cost zero: verbatim, timestamped, no questions, focus unbroken. The structure arrived later, at triage, where deciding is the point rather than an interruption.
Two weeks later: whatever happened to that interview idea? It's not in the inbox.
It's in active/newsletter/, where I decided it belonged, worded how I understood it. You looked where you'd look; I filed where I'd file. And my paraphrase says "one guest each issue," which you may or may not have meant.
Skipping the inbox skipped the owner: filing is deciding what a thought means, and auto-triage made that call silently, then paraphrased the thought on top. Delegate the moves, never the meaning.