That’s what a 2008 study by Gloria Mark and her team at UC Irvine found. It’s a stat you’ve probably heard before—often quoted as a rallying cry to defend your focus and minimize distractions.

But what happens during those 25 minutes?

Imagine you’re following a friend through an unfamiliar neighborhood. They make it through a green light, and you get stuck at the red. You don’t know where you’re going. “Just follow me” doesn’t work if you’re not together. Stress creeps in. You speed up, weave through traffic, trying to catch up—trying to get back to where you think you should be.

That’s what a work interruption feels like. It isn’t just a pause. It’s a psychological derailment. Your brain shifts into stress mode, comparing your current state to the imagined timeline where you never got interrupted. You feel behind. You rush to recover lost ground. Fight-or-flight hormones kick in.

Then—after about 25 minutes—you start to relax again. You’ve caught up. You feel like you’re back on track.

If interruptions are a fact of life, maybe they should be a part of the plan. That’s tough to swallow. When we sit down at 10:07 to do an hour-long task, we want to be done by 11:07. Linear. Clean. Done.

Reality, though, is messier. That hour might come in chunks: 23 minutes here, 17 there, 10 and 10 to finish. It might take 80 minutes to do 60 minutes of work. Not because you’re inefficient, but because you’re interrupted. That’s not failure. That’s just… life.

So what can we do?

If you can carve out time to work without interruptions, do it. That’s the gold standard. But if you can’t, don’t beat yourself up. Adjust your expectations. Break your work into smaller, self-contained chunks. Treat interruptions as natural break points between pomodoros.

And when the light turns green? Take a breath. Ease back in. You know where you’re going. You’ll get there.

But what happens when the chain does break?

Not if. When.

It happens. We miss days. We get sick. We lose motivation. Life doesn’t ask if you’re in a good place to keep going. Sooner or later, the streak ends.

Here’s the real truth:

The goal isn’t never missing a day. It’s never missing two.

James Clear said it best: “Missing one day is a mistake. Missing two days is the start of a new habit.”

And that’s the difference between consistency and resilience.

When the Chain Breaks

There’s a moment when you realize you’ve fallen off the wagon. You can feel the disappointment. Maybe guilt. Maybe frustration. But here’s the key: don’t let a stumble become a spiral.

Missing one day doesn’t undo your progress. It’s not a reset button unless you treat it like one.

Restarting is a Skill

Think of it like riding a bike. You get better by doing it, but you really get better by learning how to recover after you fall. That’s where the real growth is.

Want to build habits that last? Learn how to start again—quickly, kindly, and without a shame spiral.

Here are a few ways to make that easier:

• Keep it small. The easier it is to say yes again, the faster you restart.
• Plan for interruptions. Assume life will get in the way. Build flex days.
• Track the recovery, not just the streak. Start a new chain.

Inertia Works Both Ways

In physics, inertia keeps a moving object moving. It also keeps a stationary object at rest. Productivity is no different.

If you stopped, it’s okay. It just means your inertia is pointing in a different direction. Change your vector. Take one small action to get going again.

Even if you only do five push-ups or write one sentence, you’re rebuilding the habit.

Because momentum isn’t just about speed. It’s about direction.

One Day is All it Takes

If you’ve broken the chain, you can start again. Today counts. One day of action can interrupt a streak of inaction. One choice can change your trajectory.

The best habits aren’t built on perfection.
They’re built on persistence.

I’d flip to a new page each morning, jot down my tasks for the day, and skip right over that first little line like it was an electric fence. Every now and then, I’d try using the first line, but it never felt right. Something in the back of my mind revolted. Didn’t I know that line was supposed to be blank?

A Curious Little Quirk

The habit got truly mysterious while I was visiting my parents. I happened to glance at my mother’s planner—and there it was. That same first line, left empty.

I asked her about it. She shrugged. “I’ve always done it that way,” she said. No explanation. No theory. Just habit.

That’s when the question really started to bug me. Why do we both do this? I figured it was something I had picked up from her, but it wasn’t a satisfying answer.

Later, I stumbled on a used copy of The Advanced Day Planner User’s Guide, written by Hyrum W. Smith, back when he was Chairman of the Franklin International Institute (the Franklin in Franklin Covey). In its dusty pages, buried in an illustration, I found a long-forgotten principle that snapped everything into place.

The First Task of the Day

One of the best practices of using the Franklin Planner was to begin each day with something called “Daily Planning and Solitude.”

It wasn’t just a nice idea—it was meant to be your most important task of the day. It was a little ritual: review your goals, get clear on your priorities, and plan your work for the day. It was a quiet, grounding moment before you stepped out to face the chaos of the day.

You were encouraged to write this down as your first task every day—your A1 task. The same task, every day. The first task.

But what happens with a practice like that? What do you do when you need to write down a task you need to do a few days, weeks, or months out? You turn to that page and start on line two, leaving line one open for that sacred morning habit.

Eventually, you get tired of writing down the same “Planning and Solitude” task every day, so you stop writing it altogether. But you leave the line blank, a reminder of every day’s implicit first task.

By this time, your basal ganglia—the part of the brain that runs the autopilot—has learned: leave that line blank. That’s just what we do.

Accidental Habits Run Deep

This is how a lot of habits form, isn’t it? Not with great fanfare, but with quiet repetition. Over time, these little actions carve out neural pathways until they’re as natural as breathing. We do them without question. Without thought.

Sometimes, that works against us. We check email first thing in the morning not because it helps, but because we always have. We skip the gym because we skipped it yesterday. Our defaults become our direction.

But that same mechanism—the brain’s love of patterns—can also be our greatest ally. If we choose a good habit and commit to it long enough, it will eventually become just as second-nature.

What’s On Your Line One?

The mystery of the blank line turned out to be a gentle reminder:We’re always building habits—whether we mean to or not.

The only question is whether those habits are serving us… or just showing up out of momentum.

Habits are one shortcut we take. We train—intentionally or not—our basal ganglia that when a certain condition is met, we take a specific action. Our phone dings, we check our phone for messages. We stand up, we straighten our shirt. We stub our toe, we yelp—even if it didn’t really hurt that much.

We can interrupt these habit loops if we want to. It’s just a question of how hard we want to make it.

The hard way to do it is to try to stop the behavior completely. Nature abhors a vacuum, and our brain knows that we need to do something. Like combat styles that emphasize deflecting an incoming attack over absorbing it, the best way to end a behavior is to adjust the behavior. Turn it into a new behavior.

If you’re trying to drink less soda, don’t focus on drinking less soda. Focusing on a thing we can’t have just makes us want it more. There’s also that pesky habit trigger that tells us we’re thirsty. We need to drink something!

Stopping is hard. Ask yourself if there’s a simpler change you can make that will take you closer to the end goal you’re really trying to achieve. If you can go straight to drinking water all day, great! Sometimes that’s too big of a change to make successfully in one step. What about switching to seltzer? Still too big? What about Diet Dr. Pepper? (I’ve heard it really does taste like regular Dr. Pepper.)

This works on one-off ideas, too. They’re like tiny little one-shot programs that will run once. They can be hard to stop, too.

I’ll occasionally want to pick up a dozen donuts on the way home from work. Or turnovers. Or a pie. Or a fifth flavor of ice cream. You know—something that my wife will absolutely be glad I picked up.

I’ve found that these ideas are best handled by turning the idea into another idea altogether. Instead of a surprise dessert, why not something already on the shopping list? Or call and ask if there’s anything I can pick up on my way home? Or pick up berries or a smoothie in a bottle.

I can squash the idea outright if I want to. But these other ideas are good ideas in their own right, budget permitting. I should eat more fresh berries and vegetables. What’s a five-minute errand for me could save her half an hour. If I can turn a spontaneous meteorite of an idea into something useful, I’ll do it.

Whatever choice you make, remember that you’ve got an end in mind that you’re trying to reach. If the first choice doesn’t take you in the right direction, make another choice.

You don’t have to make a perfect choice. Just find a way to make a better choice. Better adds up.

The difference is that the bottle on the left tastes like it’s trying to kill me.

I’m trying to use mouthwash more consistently. Whenever it’s time to rinse, all I can think of is the impending flavor of doom and sadness.

This did not make using mouthwash a pleasant experience. I could make myself do it, but it used way too much willpower. It caused friction.

Friction isn’t good unless you’re trying to keep things from sliding around. Friction will keep you from installing a new habit.

Instead, you need traction. Traction moves you forward. Traction lets you move around obstacles and get back on track.

To develop a new habit, it needs to be:

• Repeatable. According to a 2009 study study conducted at University College London, it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days to learn a new habit. Exactly how long depends on the habit and on the person.
• Enjoyable. Ever been so busy having fun that you didn’t want to be responsible and get to bed? Habits should be like that. (True, you sometimes you need to put up with something unpleasant for a while; this is when you need to borrow some enjoyment from anticipating the outcome.)
• Achievable. We often install new habits in order to achieve an end result: for example, exercising regularly and improving our diet to lose weight. That final win is built by adding up all the little achievements we accumulate along the way.
• Doable. Your capabilities will increase if you stick with it, but you need to start where you are. Just don’t stay there.
• Yessable. (Okay, I made that word up—I wanted a y word that ended with -able.) We can only fit so much into our day. The more we say yes to good habits that bring us closer to our goals (Q2), the less time we have for wasteful activities that take us further away (Q4). (There are also negative habits—an action that we’re not going to take—which would make this… yeetable?)

When we identify a new habit, it’s easy to get carried away imagining what our new life is going to be like. We forget that growth takes time. We get excited and try changing too much, too quickly.

• “I’m going to read a book a week this year.” Reading is one of the best investments you can make in yourself, but a new book, every week for a year? Even if you’re reading as you drive around, that’s a lot. Try a book a month. If you have less time (or like longer books), how about a book a quarter? Or just a page a day?
• “I’m going to run a 5K! Every morning—before breakfast!” If you’re not a runner, you may not realize how far five miles is. Try a couch-to–5K program that starts small and grows with you. Start off by spending five minutes on the treadmill. Try letting the ritual of getting on the treadmill be the win, no matter how short the run is.
• “I’m going to lose 50 lbs in six weeks!” That’s not sustainable—or healthy. Let go of the idea of showing up at the 20-year reunion wearing the tux you wore to prom. Figure out a healthy, sustainable rate and set the target date from there. (And be sure to celebrate your progress along the way!)

It’s good to be excited about your goals. If you aren’t excited, you’re probably going to lose interest. Stack the deck in your favor. Pick small goals that will point you in the right direction. Read a page a day. Run five minutes on the treadmill. Lose one pound a week (taking December off).

Success could be as simple as changing your mouthwash.

How can you identify the early warning signs? How can you identify a problem early enough that you can still do something about it?

Let me give you an example. This is something that I do frequently. (Honestly, more frequently than I’d like to admit.)

Let’s say you’ve just finished a task. Or maybe you’ve gotten interrupted—you’ve just come back from a break, grabbing lunch, stretching your legs, whatever.

It’s time to check your task list so you can remind yourself what you need to be working on.

So you pull out your planner and review your tasks for the day. Then you ask yourself, “Now what do I really need to be working on?”

That’s a red flag. You’re not keeping one task list at that point, but two. You have the carefully curated list of tasks that looks good on paper, but doesn’t completely capture all of the tasks that you need to do. Those other tasks are swimming around in your head.

Maybe there things that are too small and trivial to write down. You don’t want to spend the time, energy, and ink it would take to write them down. (That’s fair—the two-minute rule exists for a reason, but only applies when you complete that task right away. If you save the task for later, write it down.)

Maybe you don’t want anyone to know about the task if they see your planner. Maybe you don’t want to be reminded of the task long-term.

Whatever the reason, keeping this separate mental list will derail your plans for the day if you let it.

1. You can’t stop thinking about what you’re not getting done. Your brain knows that you don’t have these important tasks written down and you’ll forget about them if you stop thinking about them. So your brain reinforces this mental task list by constantly reviewing it.
2. You have way too much to do. Estimation is hard. When you refuse to put all your tasks in one place, it’s impossible. You need a complete view of all the demands on your time (including meetings). Once you know how much time you have, you will have a better sense of how much you can accomplish.
3. You’re frustrated that you can’t get anything done. Whichever list you’re working from, you know the other list is there. Even if you get all the way through one list, you won’t feel satisfied with your results. If you put everything on a single, written list, you’ll have a record of what you’ve done.

When you catch yourself keeping a “real” task list that’s separate from the “official” task list, that’s a sign that you don’t trust your plan for the day. Take a few minutes to create a new plan you can trust.

Do a brain dump. Get everything out of your head. Every “oh, right, I need to ______” thought—write it down.

Once all your tasks are in one place, you might have more than you can do today. That’s okay. Prioritize the unified list. Some written tasks will get deferred to make room, and some mental tasks just needed captured so you can remember to do them later.

If you don’t trust the plan you came up with, throw it out. Plans are easy to change. You’re instinctively trying to revise it, so go with it! Revise your plan as often as it takes to get it right.

When you trust your system, including your plan for the day, you will be more relaxed. You’ll feel more confident that you can create and execute a plan. You’ll spend less time worrying about what you have to do and spend more time doing what you want to do.

So you put off the important project and take care of the urgent tasks.

Again.

First, don’t beat yourself up over it. Sometimes, you need to do that. Quadrant 1 comes before Quadrant 2. You’ve got to put out the fires as they come up.

If a Quadrant 1 activity has a deadline before a Quadrant 2 activity, you work in Quadrant 1. If you don’t have time for both, the Quadrant 2 activity isn’t going to happen, at least not yet. It gets pushed back. If you’re not careful, it will get pushed back again. And again.

Comparing two activities as Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 2 only works when the importance of the two activities is the same, or at least close. If not, what may be a Quadrant 1 activity in its own right is actually a Quadrant 3 activity when compared to the Quadrant 2 activity. (Yes, a Quadrant 2 activity can look like a Quadrant 4 activity in comparison, which is why it’s so easy to put off when you’re up against a Q1 deadline.)

This is especially important to consider when you find the same two activities repeatedly competing against each other. Task A is in Quadrant 1 because it has a hard deadline next week. Task B is in Quadrant 2 because the deadline for its project—Project B—is months away. That feels like lifetimes compared to the urgency of Task A.

In other words, the penalty of not working on Project B is still a ways off. The reward for working on Project A is immediate. Guess which one we choose to work on?

Even when we give ourselves a deadline for Task B, just to keep Project B moving along, we know, deep down, that it’s a squishy deadline. Task B isn’t really due because Project B isn’t due. It’s okay to knock out Task A. We can work a little harder next week and make up for lost time on Project B.

Next week, you make the same choice. Task A needs done. Task B can wait. The schedule for Project B starts to slip as we kick the can further and further down the road.

At some point, you need to ask yourself what you really want to achieve. Is doing Project A worth not doing Project B? That’s the choice you’ve been making.

Are you willing to make a different choice? Are you willing to give up Project A—at least temporarily—so you can do Project B? Is Project B truly more important than Project A? Or is Project B just a distraction that’s filling you with guilt? You have to decide and then act accordingly.

We like to think “it’s not or, it’s and!” but we’re finite. We do have our limits.

If you aren’t willing to sacrifice for what you want most, what you want most becomes the sacrifice. Project A and Project B are both worthwhile projects. That’s why you want to do them. That’s why it’s hard to choose between them.

You know the results you’re getting now. If you want different results, are you willing to make a different choice?

What kind of pen should you use with your planner?

The best answer is “one that you enjoy writing with”. You want the experience and the results to be as nice as possible.

Most people whom I have heard ask that question are actually asking a slightly different question: “Should I use an erasble pen?” They don’t like pencils because you always need to sharpen them, the graphite smears, and it makes you feel like you’re back in elementary school.

Ink, on the other hand, is permanent (by comparison). If you make a mistake, you’re stuck with it. And what if your plans change? Isn’t there a way to get the flexibility of pencil with the professional look of pen?

I’ve been using an erasable pen for several years, a Pilot Frixion with Navy Blue ink. It feels smooth, looks great, and erases cleanly.

“But what about leaving it in the hot sun? My friend’s husband’s brother’s college roommate left his on the dashboard of the car and all the ink disappeared!”

Now personally, I’ve never had this problem. It’s not something I’m worried about happening. It’s not something you should worry about happening either. First, it’s not likely happen (more on that later). Second, if it does happen, you can get it back again.

Pilot Frixion pens use a kind of ink called thermochromic ink. That’s an ink where the temperature determines the color of the ink. It starts out colored at room temperature. When you “erase” the ink, you’re not rubbing it away like a pencil; you’re using friction to raise the temperature of the ink.

This is an incredible behavior, but it’s where some people get stuck. There are other ways you can raise the temperature of the ink. (The Rocketbook Wave is actually designed to be erased in the microwave.)

So, yes, if you leave your planner sitting on the dashboard all afternoon, in Phoenix, in August, you might accidentally erase it.

But you can get it back.

When you heat thermochromic ink, it changes from colored to clear. The ink inside a Pilot Frixion pen is designed to make this transition around 65 °C (149 °F).

Do you know what happens when you cool it down below —20 °C (–4 °F)? That’s right—it transitions from clear back to colored.

Here’s a notecard that I erased by putting it in an oven at 150 °F for 20 minutes. (Kids, don’t try this at home.)

Here’s the same card after spending 45 minutes in the freezer.

For comparison, here’s the original, before it baked in the oven. Note that it’s darker than what came out of the freezer, though I may have just not left it in the freezer long enough.

This will cause all the thermochromic ink on the page(s) to transition back to the colored state, whether the ink was accidentally transitioned in the car or intentionally erased.

Obviously, you shouldn’t use an eraseable pen for documents where permanency matters, like on a check, a legal document, or even when addressing outgoing mail. (If the address accidentally fades on that birthday card you sent, the post office might not know about the freezer trick.)

Paired with your planner or a notebook, erasable ink gives you the professional look of ink with the flexibility to change your plans or fix mistakes at any time. And if your planner should happen to spend the afternoon on the dashboard of your car, you can pop it in the freezer to get everything back.

The question is especially poignant when you’re looking in the mirror.

Human behavior is fascinating. We have the same basic human needs but we each have our own notions of how to best meet those needs. Sometimes it works. We can really go off the rails when it doesn’t.

The Reality Model by Hyrum W. Smith is a powerful tool for understanding behavior, whether it’s individual, a team, or a nation. In six steps, it shows how our needs turn into actions that evolve over time.

Here are the steps of the Reality Model:

1. Needs. Abraham Maslow famously expressed our basic human needs as a hierarchy: Survival, Safety, Society, Swagger, and Self-Actualization. Everything we do is an attempt to satisfy one or more of these needs. (It’s sometimes easier to think in terms of a specific, short-term need like “I need to be in Denver, CO, on February 22” instead of figuring out how to fit that trip into the five standard needs.)
2. Belief Window. Our belief window is everything that we believe to be true about the world. It’s our understanding of how reality works. That understanding—correct or incorrect—will determine how we will set out to meet our needs.
3. Rules. Based off of our understanding of how the world works, we establish a system of if-then rules that govern how we act. Each one is basically a habit trigger: If this condition is true (habit cue) then I will do X (habit response).
4. Behavior Patterns. Over times, these rules establish behavior patterns. It’s important to look at patterns over time, not isolated instances. On any given Tuesday, our prefrontal cortex can override our standard behavior and choose to do something different.
5. Results. Sometimes, the results are easy to measure. (Did you reach your target weight? Are you having a good time?) Frequently, it can be fuzzy or come with trade-offs, meeting one need at the cost of another. (I’m having a good time now, but I’ve still got that report to work on…)
6. Feedback. If a result meets your needs over time, you have a correct belief on your belief window. If a result doesn’t meet your needs, the belief is incorrect and needs to change.

Let’s run a couple of examples through the Reality Model and see what happens.

1. Need: “I need to be across town at 2:00.”
2. Belief Window: “Yellow lights mean go faster.”
3. Rules: “If the light turns yellow, I’m going to floor it. If I have to wait at a stop light, I’m going to be late.”
4. Behavior Patterns: You usually make it through the intersection before the light’s all the way red.
5. Results: You probably arrive on-time. You might have higher blood pressure, adrenaline, and cortisol levels. You increase your chances of getting a traffic ticket or being in an accident.
6. Feedback: If you get stopped by a cop, you’re going to be late. Will that meet your need to arrive by 2:00? If you get into an accident, you just violated your need for Safety (hopefully not Survival). Even if you get there safely, you’re increasing the adrenaline and cortisol in your system. What impact do you think that will have over time?

In a pinch, that might meet your short-term needs, but I wouldn’t recommend making a habit of it.

When a behavior doesn’t meet your needs, examine what’s on your belief window. That’s usually where the problem is, and it’s the easiest to change. When you change what’s in your belief window, your behavior will automatically and immediately change.

So let’s make a change there.

1. Need: “I need to be across town at 2:00.”
2. Belief Window: “Yellow lights mean stay out.”
3. Rules: “If the light turns yellow, I’m going to stop if it’s safe to do so. If I have to wait at a stop light, that gives me more time to prepare myself.”
4. Behavior Patterns: You stop at the light, as long as you don’t have to slam on the brakes. You use the time at the red light for breathing exercises.
5. Results: You arrive relaxed and not more than two or three minutes late.
6. Feedback: Your need to arrive at 2:00 is more or less met. Your general needs for Safety, Security, and Survival aren’t compromised.

Most of the time, arriving at 2:02 vs. 2:00 isn’t a problem. If it is, then it’s time to look at some more of the beliefs on your belief window that may be at play. Maybe you have beliefs like “It takes me 15 minutes to get across town” or “I can be ready to leave in two minutes” that need to be revised.

What if you have “my job determines my self-worth” in your belief window? Or “I’m no good at learning new things”? What sort of rules do you think those beliefs might create? What behavior patterns are you going to see from someone with those beliefs?

What about “failure is a chance to try again, smarter”? How do you think that might affect someone’s willingness to stretch themselves?

Changing the beliefs in our belief window is the easiest way to change our behavior, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Some of them may have been there for a long time, and they’re etched deeply. They may have met our needs previously, but that’s changed over time. It can take a lot of courage and humility to take an honest look at the beliefs in your belief window and change the incorrect beliefs that are there.

If you want to change behavior, take a look at your beliefs. The Reality Model gives you a visual picture of how your beliefs are causing your behaviors.

For more information on the Reality Model, check out The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management by Hyrum W. Smith.

You’re also familiar with the challenge it can be to get your thoughts down in a coherent fashion.

A brain dump just gives you a pile of thoughts to sift through, like Marie Kondo dumped your brain into a pile on your bed to sort through.

Going straight to an outline, like we were taught in middle school, is too rigid. An outline has a strict top-to-bottom, left-to-right ordering, and that’s not how our non-linear brains think. We start trying to organize our ideas before we’re done coming up with them.

This is where a mind map comes in. A mind map has a hierachy to it, but it’s not as rigid as an outline (and it has a couple of tricks up its sleeve that an outline can’t match). It’s flexible enough to capture ideas as our brain thinks of them, but still help organize them into something coherent.

A mind map is a two-dimensional graph of ideas. Your main idea, subject, or topic is prominently at the center. As you move outward, each idea becomes more specific. Similar topics are grouped together in a cluster, and related ideas are connected with a line. When you’re done, you have a map of what’s on your mind.

An outline has one way to express a relationship between elements: a child element expands upon its parent. That’s it. (Sure, siblings are related because they’re both expanding upon the same parent, but that’s a secondary effect of the parent-child relationship.)

Because a mind map is a two-dimensional graph, you can draw a line between any two ideas. Express that two or three siblings really are closely related by connecting them, or connect one idea to another that’s in a completely different part of the graph.

To create a mind map, write your main idea, subject, or topic in the center of the page. Next, surround it with the high level topics, each connected by a line. If I need a little nudge at this point, I’ll start with the relevant journalistic questions (who, what, when, where, why, and how) to prime the pump.

You can start breaking ideas down hierarchically, just like you would an outline. Surround an idea with more specific sub-ideas and draw a line. You can also connect ideas by drawing relationship lines across hierarchical boundaries.

It’s okay to jump around. Let your brain come up with ideas in whatever order it wants to. Leave room if necessary to add the intermediate ideas if your brain jumps to a specific detail early on.

When you’re done, you have two options, depending on why you’re creating a mind map. If you’re creating a mind map to have a mind map, you’ll want to create a final draft from this rough draft, now that you’ve got all of the ideas out and on paper. A mind map can communicate a lot of information as a resource.

If you’re using a mind map as a tool to organize your thoughts as your prepare a speech, lesson, or blog post, you’ll need to find a linear path through the graph. Pick a starting point and start moving through nodes. Once you’ve covered a subgraph, find the next subgraph to dive into.

You don’t need to hit every idea; the mind map will show you that some ideas may be an interesting thought, but they’re not really connected to anything else so they can be safely skipped.

A mind map helps you clarify your thinking. One interesting side-effect of this is discovering gaps in your understanding. A sparsely-populated region of the graph may represent an opportunity to learn something new.

The next time you need to outline something, try creating a mind map instead. You might find it easier to think if it’s easier to capture your thoughts.