The Universal Flow Chart.
The Universal Flow Chart deals with the usual case where the problem splits into several pieces which can be handled one by one. But if there are special cases where the problem can be solved immediately, handle them first. This sounds an awful lot like recursion.
You have likely seen the definition of the Fibonacci Series. This is a series of integers, where the n'th integer is the series is
Fib( 1 ) == 1 Fib( 2 ) == 1 Fib( n ) == Fib(n-1) + Fib(n-2)
What are the special cases that might be handled with early returns?