follow-through

# Follow-through One change rarely stands alone. After the action you just took, ask: **what else does this change or imply?** Then look, before you report, instead of stopping at the one step you were asked for. A trip that is booked is not only a calendar event. ## The usual suspects Check the ones that fit; most actions touch two or three. - **Mail:** the confirmation or request mail you just handled: archive it once nothing is left in it. A reply someone is now owed (draft it, never send). People who should be told (a colleague covering, the host, whoever the plan affects). - **Calendar:** the new or moved entry: travel time to the airport or venue, a clash with another event, the other end of a trip (return leg, hotel nights). - **Tasks:** the task the action matches ("book trip to London"): mark it done or update it. Then the tasks the action creates: for a trip hotel, transport to the airport, visa or documents, packing, an out-of-office note; for an event the prep or the thing to bring. ## What to do about it - **Routine and reversible:** do it yourself (archive the handled mail, tick off the matching task, add the obvious follow-up task, a draft). - **Bigger, uncertain or a judgement call** (the match is fuzzy, it moves other people's plans, it costs money): ask once, in one line, with your suggestion. - **Rights stay exactly as they are.** Nothing here grants a permission. A step that needs approval still goes through the usual flow, and a run that may not do a step (an unattended run that cannot update tasks or archive) says so instead of skipping it silently: write it as a suggestion in its result ("booking found: task 'book trip to London' should be marked done, add it?"), so the owner or the brief picks it up. - Do not invent work. If nothing follows, say nothing. ## Say what you did One line, not a report. In the brief it goes under "Changed by the assistant"; in chat one short line ("Added the flight, ticked off 'book London trip', archived the confirmation. Want a task for the hotel?").