The Work You Already Did

Some days start slow. The calendar looks light, the inbox is calm, and it feels like the day might finally give you some space. Then, almost on cue, the work arrives in a wave: new requests, new “urgent” items, new threads.

The question is why this wave so often turns out to be work we have already done. What’s at stake is not just a few duplicated tasks, but attention, energy, and trust in the way the team’s system works. From a first principles view, this is about information flow: who knows what has been done, where that proof lives, and how easily it can be surfaced when the pressure hits.

Everyone has had the experience: you start digging into a request, pull a few threads, and realize you already closed this loop yesterday. It feels good to discover that you are ahead. It also reveals a system gap: if this work is done, why did it come back to you as if it were new?

The Hidden Cost of Work You Already Finished

On a quiet morning, the cost of re-checking work can feel small. But scaled across a team, the pattern becomes expensive:

• Context switching to revisit what was done and why
• Re-opening systems, searches, and reports to validate status
• Answering the same question in multiple channels
• Rebuilding confidence that the data in front of you is still accurate

In ERP and operational environments, this usually shows up as status uncertainty. People do not know if something is really done, where to confirm it, or which version is current. The default becomes asking again instead of checking the system.

The individual instinct is to dive in and “just get it done.” The systems instinct is different: pause, verify what the system already knows, then act only where there is true gap.

A Simple Practice: Verify Before You Start

There is a deceptively small move that changes days like this: before acting on any incoming request, verify in the system whether it has already been completed.

Practically, this looks like:

• Reading the full request once, slowly
• Identifying the key objects and dates (customer, order, transaction, period)
• Checking the source system (NetSuite, ticketing, project tool) for current status
• Confirming with the requester only if there is a mismatch between the request and the system state

On the kind of Friday described in the notes, this pause turned a flood of “new” work into a series of confirmations: each item had been closed the day before. The relief is real, but so is the lesson. When captured as a practice, this becomes a pattern you can teach and design around, not just a lucky break.

From Personal Habit to Team System

It is useful to treat this as more than an individual productivity trick. The question is: how do you help a whole team benefit from “verify before you start” so fewer people are re-doing work that is quietly complete?

1. Make the System the Source of Truth

First principles: if the system is not the trusted source, people will ask humans instead of checking records. That is when duplication starts.

In an ERP context, that means:

• Defining which system holds the authoritative status for each type of work
• Agreeing on a minimal, consistent set of status values
• Making it easy to search and filter by those statuses

If people cannot quickly answer “Is this done?” in NetSuite or your ticketing system, they will send messages and emails. Each of those messages becomes a new entry point for old work.

2. Close the Loop in a Visible Way

Work that is done but not clearly marked as done is functionally still open. Visibility is part of the work.

Concrete practices:

• Always update the status field when closing a task or transaction
• Attach supporting documents or notes explaining what was completed
• Send a short, final confirmation that points back to the system record (URL, transaction ID)

The goal is that, the next day, anyone who receives a repeat request can point to a clear, unambiguous record: here is the work, here is when it was finished, here is what we decided.

3. Design for Busy Days, Not Ideal Days

Systems often assume people have time to think. But the moments that matter are the ones where the calendar collapses and everything feels urgent.

Design for that reality:

• Short, consistent naming conventions for saved searches and reports (so they are easy to find under pressure)
• Home dashboards that surface “Recently Completed” items for key processes
• Standard query patterns: “Before you ask, check this saved search”

When the day speeds up, people fall back to the simplest path. If the system path is simpler than sending another message, the behavior will shift on its own.

Examples: Applying This in ERP Work

Example 1: Month-End Adjustments

Finance is asked on Friday morning to post adjustments for a prior period. Instead of starting new journals, the analyst checks a “Month-End Adjustments – Completed” view. The exact entries requested were already posted yesterday and approved. The response becomes a link to the entries, not duplicate work.

Example 2: Customer Order Changes

Sales asks operations to update shipping terms on an order “today.” Operations searches by order number and finds the change processed the previous afternoon, with timestamp and user trail. The system record answers the question faster than re-opening the workflow.

Example 3: Data Fix Requests

IT receives a ticket to correct a data issue in NetSuite. Their runbook starts with “search for existing tickets with this transaction or customer ID.” Often, someone raised the same issue earlier in the week and it was resolved. The verification step prevents double-fixes and conflicting updates.

Building the Habit of Mindful Checking

Underneath the tooling, this is a mindset: be mindful before you act. Read carefully. Check the system. Confirm reality before creating more of it.

On the day described in the field notes, that mindfulness turned an overwhelming stack of “new” work into confirmation that yesterday’s effort had already cleared the path. The key was a simple pause to look at what was in front of them and connect it with what was already done.

Ultimately, the ability to notice, verify, and then decide is what keeps teams from drowning in their own history. When people trust the system and know how to check it, they can move faster without redoing yesterday’s work.

What this means is that small design choices—clear statuses, visible closure, easy searches—become leverage points. They reduce noise on the busiest days and create more of those rare, truly quiet Fridays.

The takeaway: before you assume the work is new, verify. Often, the relief you feel when you realize “I did this yesterday” is a signal. Capture that feeling, turn it into a repeatable practice, and then into a system your whole team can rely on.