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The Visible First Step, Built In

"Every time I leave a project, I leave a re-entry point."

This is the core idea behind Focura. Not the timer. Not the breaks. The re-entry point.

The Problem

The hardest moment for an ADHD brain isn't during focused work — it's the transition into focused work. The morning. The return from a break. The context switch after a meeting.

Task initiation impairment means your brain can understand exactly what needs to happen and still not activate. The more ambiguous the starting point, the worse it gets. "Continue working on the project" might as well be "figure out the entire project from scratch."

During the Shortcuts year, this was the biggest gap. Every morning started with a blank prompt: "What are you working on?" That question is the enemy. It requires memory, planning, and decision-making — exactly the cognitive functions that are weakest at the start.

The Visible First Step

ADHD researchers and high-performing people with ADHD describe a trick: prepare the next starting point before you stop. Leave the repo open, the cursor on the right line, a note that says exactly what to do next.

The idea is that tomorrow, the brain doesn't need to think about what to do. It just sees the next step and executes. The activation energy drops to near zero.

Focura builds this into the workflow. At the end of your last session each day, the app asks four questions:

  1. What were you working on? — the project or task
  2. Where did you stop? — the specific point you left off
  3. What comes next? — the exact next action
  4. Any context you'll need? — links, notes, decisions pending

These four fields become your re-entry point. The next morning, when you open Focura, that re-entry point is the first thing you see — before the timer, before session setup, before anything else.

Why Four Fields

We considered fewer. A single "notes" field would be simpler. But ADHD working memory is limited, and a single dump of text requires parsing — which is another form of activation energy.

Four structured fields answer the four questions the brain asks when returning to work: What was I doing? Where was I? What's next? What do I need to know? Each answer is pre-loaded, ready to consume without thinking.

The Design Choice

Re-entry points are not buried in a settings menu or an optional feature. They're part of the end-of-day flow — the last thing the app asks you to do. And they're the first thing displayed on next launch.

This positioning is deliberate. It makes the handoff between days a first-class interaction, not an afterthought. The message is: your future self will thank you for these 60 seconds.

What This Enables

Over time, re-entry points become a log of transitions — a visible record of where your focus has been and how your work evolves. But that's a secondary benefit. The primary purpose is simple:

Tomorrow morning, you won't have to ask "where was I?"

It's already there.