NESTED MODE DEPTH
Getting out is not the reverse of getting in.
01 DEFINITION
Condition in which ways of working contain other ways of working, so a person's position is a stack rather than a state, and the action that leaves one level is not the action that leaves the next.
02 CONDITIONS
UNCERTAINTY
MISSING
How deep the person currently is is not shown anywhere.
TIME PRESSURE
SHORT
Getting out matters when there is no time to work out how.
ERROR ASYMMETRY
SYMMETRIC
Leaving too far and not far enough both leave the person somewhere they did not intend.
OPERATOR STATE
DEDICATED
The person is inside it and how deep they are is theirs to remember.
03 WHERE IT APPEARS
MEDICALDevice menus contain sub-states, and leaving one is not the same act as leaving the next.
INDUSTRIALConfiguration screens open inside configuration screens with no consistent way back.
PUBLIC SERVICEA case process contains sub-processes, each with its own way of being left.
FINANCEApproval flows nest inside one another and the position within them is not shown.
AI EXP.A tool enters states within states and the person cannot say how far in they are.
EDUCATIONLearning paths branch into sub-paths whose exits differ from the one that entered them.
04 WHERE THIS IS SURFACING
This surfaces wherever capability was added by containing rather than by widening. Each level was reasonable on its own and the depth was nobody's decision.
The question it keeps returning to is whether there can be one way out that is always the same — an escape that always returns to the top discards the work at every level below it, and one that steps back a level asks people to know how deep they are.