Context: Post #6 in my sequence of private Lightcone Infrastructure memos edited for public consumption.

David Allen, of Getting Things Done fame says:

Every commitment unfinished is an “open loop”; and when it is tracked in your psyche, instead of your system, it will require energy and attention to track and maintain. Once the open loops are captured, you can manage completion by using an external system that takes much less energy than keeping it in your head. Every commitment unfinished requires management in a trusted system until it is done or discontinued.

What goes for personal productivity system, in this case goes even stronger for organizational attention. In my experience, Lightcone is capable of maintaining something like 8-10 open streams of work at any given point in time[1], and at that point we are definitely already starting to buckle and occasionally drop things.

This means as an organization, it's really quite important that when you open up some kind of organizational loop, that one variable you optimize for heavily is "total calendar time for which the loop is open". Closing an open loop at an organizational level means that either an issue is fully resolved, or work [...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

November 17th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Shfziga3BdCi2L5D6/close-open-loops

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.