If this then that is the whole idea

Nearly every workflow, no matter how it looks on screen, boils down to one plain sentence: if this happens, then that happens. If a form comes in, then send a reply. If a payment fails, then notify someone. Once you can say your workflow that way, you understand it completely.

This matters because it's easy to get lost staring at a screen full of boxes and arrows and forget what you're actually building. I come back to the plain sentence to keep myself honest about whether the workflow still matches the problem I started with. It also makes explaining your setup to anyone else painless, since you can describe the whole thing out loud before you ever open the tool.

If you can't finish that sentence for a workflow you're building, you're not ready to build it yet.

Try this today: write the if-this-then-that sentence for one workflow you already have running and check it still matches what it actually does.