To be Effective You Have to be Understood, How to Write Better Instructions

No matter what your position in Information Technology, I'm sure you've either written down or verbally given instructions frequently while working in it. But how good are we at it, if your like me since it isn't among your favorite activities you probably haven't given it much thought. And you probably will admit you could probably use some work in that area. Well, today is the day, from Lifehack.org we have How to Give Instructions by Dustin Wax

In it he reviews a book on the subject Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Learning to Give, Take, and Use Instructions, by Richard Saul Wurman and he outlines the following basic set of instructions to create your instructions by. That's getting tricky isn't it.

"In order to be effective, a good set of instructions must provide information about six things:

• Mission: What do the instructions show me how to do?
• Destination: What will I see, hear, experience when I’ve followed the instructions?
• Procedure: What are the exact steps I need to follow to reach the destination and accomplish the mission? What tools and equipments will I need? What special information do I need to finish?
• Time: How long will it take me to finish? (Other measures might be appropriate, like “how much money will I have to spend?” or “how far will I have to drive?”)
• Anticipation: What difficulties should I expect to encounter on the way? How should I prepare for the project?; and
• Failure: What will happen if I screw up? What does failure look like?"

Take a look, Take it to heart, And be more effective.

Sphere: Related Content