The Space Between

Close the last thing you were doing. Not mentally — physically. If there's a tab, a document, a tool: close it or set it down. Here's what you're practicing today. Every time you move from one task to another, you carry residue. An unfinished thought. A decision that didn't resolve. An emotional charge from a difficult message. You walk into the next thing already contaminated, and you don't notice — because the contamination feels like your normal thinking. The skill is inserting a gap. A deliberate transition. Three moves: close, clear, open. Start now. Think of the last task you were doing before this. Name it to yourself — one phrase. Note where you stopped. Not to finish it — to acknowledge the stopping point. Set it down. Now clear. One breath. Not a deep breath, not a technique — just breath as a separator. Inhale, exhale, nothing else. That's the close-clear move. Most people skip it entirely. They think the gap is wasted time. It is not wasted time. It is what makes the next stretch of focus clean.