How to Give Crystal Clear Directions

A lot of content pieces are directions.

Guides on how to get from Point A to Point B.

A clear guide makes things easy.

A bad guide is like getting a bad haircut.

Have you ever gotten a bad haircut?

Initially, at the barbershop, it looked good.

But by the time you came home, you saw that the barber missed so many spots!

Now you had to do his job for him.

You had to get a cloth and place it over your sink, cut off the untouched hairs, vacuum, take a shower, and possibly repeat the process.

Annoying!

That’s what it’s like when we give sloppy directions.

Rather than a person getting from Point A to Point B, they are having to Google a bunch of words they don’t understand.

We need to understand how annoying bad directions are before we get in the habit of giving good directions.

The Poor GPS

Whenever I take a long road trip, I’m often the person driving.

If I’m driving, I want to make sure the passenger is engaged.

So, I have them give me directions.

When we start the trip, the passenger is okay with giving directions:

‘Take a left, take a right, go straight.’

Eventually, the passenger gets lackadaisical.

And that’s when I feel the annoyance of getting bad directions.

They’ll tell me a little too late on taking a certain direction.

‘Left, left! Dang, you missed it. Can you do a U-turn?’

I think this is a one-time occurrence, but it’s not.

It’s just the beginning.

Later on, they’ll be like:

‘Right, right, right! Ah… you missed it.’

And other times, they will just say:

‘Straight.’

But they’ll stay ‘straight’ without any further context.

• Am I staying on this road for a little bit or is this a road I’m driving 70 miles on?

Context matters!!

How Sloppy Directions Are Born

After these passengers fail with their only assignment, I see them looking at me with an annoyed face.

They give me the look of:

‘You didn’t know that you were supposed to take a left?’

No, I didn’t!

This is my first time going to Tennessee just like you.

Since they have the GPS staring at their face, they think I have an awareness of the GPS as well.

But that’s not true.

I only have the awareness of the road.

The passenger is falsely superimposing their vision of the GPS onto me.

Sloppy directions are born when the direction-giver assumes the recipient knows the field just as well as them.

When the direction-giver makes a silly assumption like that, they use big words, and give hazy commands.

Hazy commands are the exact opposite of clear directions.

We need to give directions WITHIN the directions.

Directions Within the Directions

The suboptimal way for the passenger to give a direction is to say:

‘Turn left.’

The optimal way for the passenger to give a direction is to say:

‘Turn left but stay on your right lane because you’re going to take a right in 1.5 miles.’

With the first direction, I’d go to the left lane and think that I’d just stay there.

And if the passenger tells me last minute that I’m supposed to take a right soon, who is to say I will make it?

Maybe there are a bunch of cars that prevent me from taking an abrupt right.

Even if I could pull off the abrupt right, I’d be pissed off for being put in that position.

I’d feel like I couldn’t relax as the driver.

With the optimal direction, the passenger gave me directions within a direction.

‘Turn left but stay on your right because you will take a right in 1.5 miles.’

This makes things crystal clear.

Adding context within a direction is music to the nervous system.

How to Breathe Life into Your Procedures

I want you to think of the procedures you will create in the following ways:

• The person who is consuming the procedure knows NOTHING about the subject at hand.
• The procedure should be so detailed that they never have to bother you.

We are going for:

‘It’s so easy a monkey can do it.’

When we assume that the recipient knows nothing about the field, it’s easier to give directions within the directions.

Recently, I’ve been working with a tool called GetMunch.

And their customer support has been downright awful.

They will keep asking me to send them links without specifying which links:

‘Send me a link of the project page please.’

I’m confused.

I send the link that I think they want.

‘That’s of the clip page, I need a link of the project page.’

Um…okay. How about you tell me EXACTLY where the project page is??

That’s when they do something that they should have initially done.

They take a screenshot and highlight the link they want me to copy.

A screenshot showed me the initial area that I should have been on, and the red arrow they drew on the screenshot gave further directions for me to get to my desired location.

When they are detailed like that, they make it easier to get the job done.

Assume the person knows nothing!

Sloppy Directions Get Sloppy Results

A clear direction allows people to get from Point A to Point B.

A lot of time is saved.

The direction-giver and the recipient both win when clear directions are in the air.

I’ve been in the car with folks who give crystal-clear GPS directions.

That’s a good measurement of whether or not someone will be good at content creation.

Weird metric, I know.

But I give them the GPS test.

If they give clear directions, then I see that they are aware.

It takes emotional intelligence to add context to the directions, so we make the driver’s life easy.

How’s your GPS test?

Do you efficiently get people from Point A to Point B?

Or do you have them stumbling and fumbling along the way?

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