What it is
A bridge task is a small, easy, mechanical thing you do between two cognitively demanding tasks. It's not a break (you're still working) and it's not the next big thing (you're not yet diving in). It's a runway.
For ADHD brains, the gap between finishing one hard thing and starting the next is dangerous. It's where you end up in the kitchen, or scrolling, or hyperfocused on tidying. The bridge task fills that gap deliberately.
When to use it
- You finish a meeting and can't get into focused work right after
- You finish a writing session and immediately need to do something else technical
- You're back from lunch and starting feels enormous
- The next task is hard and the gap before it is where you usually lose the thread
How to do it
- Pick a bridge task in advance (not in the moment, when your brain has already wandered).
- It should take 5–15 minutes. Long enough to recover, short enough not to become its own rabbit hole.
- It should be mechanical and satisfying. Process a few emails. Tidy a folder. File something. Update a status. Reply to one message.
- End it cleanly. When the bridge task is done, you go straight into the next hard task. No "one more email."
An example
After every meeting, I used to either crash or get sucked into Slack. Both were bad.
Started bridging with: reply to one Slack message that's been waiting, then close Slack. Five minutes, mechanical, useful, done.
After the bridge, I could start the next focused task within two minutes. Without the bridge, it was usually 20+ minutes of drift.
When this fails
- The bridge becomes the destination. If your "five minutes of emails" becomes 45 minutes, you didn't bridge. You got swallowed.
- The bridge task is too cognitive. Replying thoughtfully to a hard email isn't a bridge. Filing it is.
- You don't decide it in advance. "I'll do something easy next" is not a bridge. It's a coin toss that usually lands on social media.
Try it this week
Identify one transition where you usually lose 20+ minutes. Pre-pick a 10-minute bridge task you'll always do at that transition. Test it for three days. See whether the next big task starts more easily.