Part Two: The product · Everyday use
A feed or a queue that never ends keeps people in the product. It also leaves them feeling they are never done.
A newspaper had a back page. A letter tray could be emptied. An endless feed has neither.
A list that ends gives people a reason to leave, and each extra minute counts as engagement. So the bottom is taken away. More arrives as you reach it.
For the person, there is now no point at which they can say "that's it." They stop when they are tired, or guilty, or interrupted, and they leave with the sense of something unfinished. That feeling gets attached to the product.
Work software does the same thing with less glamour. A ticket queue refills as fast as it is cleared. A list of notifications never reaches zero. A dashboard always has something in red. People who work in those tools never get the small satisfaction of being done, and it wears them down more than the work itself.
Wordle, as Josh Wardle built it, went the other way. There is one puzzle a day. Solve it, or fail to, and there is nothing more until tomorrow. It does keep a streak count, and that part is a hook. The end is the part worth copying: people finish, close it, and get on with the day.
Ends can be built into ordinary products. "That is everything since yesterday." "These five need you today. The rest can wait." "Nothing needs you until Thursday." Each one divides what is the person's to deal with now from everything else that exists.
A company that counts time spent will see an end as a loss. Nobody has to win that argument to begin. One queue can get a "done for today" this week.
Therefore:
Give every stream of things an end that people can reach: all that is new, today's share, everything that needs them. When they reach it, say so plainly, and let them leave feeling finished.
In practice. Find the longest list in the product. Ask what "done for today" means to the person looking at it, and whether the screen is able to say it.
Goes with. An end sits naturally beside QUIET BY DEFAULT (48). Deciding what belongs in today's share is the work of LISTS THAT ANSWER THE QUESTION (69), and saying "you are done" has to be true: HONEST STATUS (82).