The Request Sounded Simple... It Wasn't.

You say yes.

You open the document. Start researching. Pull together some notes. Maybe build a few slides.

Two weeks later, you hand it over.

Nobody was careless.

You did exactly what you were asked to do.

The problem is that nobody ever agreed on what "done" meant.

So you spent two weeks answering a question nobody had actually defined.

LET’S FIX THAT IN 10 MINUTES.

🔴🟡🟢 COPY THIS INTO CHATGPT OR YOUR AI TOOL:

Act as my project chief of staff.

Now you have something more useful than a polished interpretation.

You have a list of what you know and what you still need to find out.

Turn the known information into a short brief.

Keep it simple:

Anything you don't know stays marked: [ASK]

Don't fill the gaps just to make the brief look complete.

Now send the brief back to the person who made the request.

You don't need a long explanation.

Then wait for the answer.

If they correct something, change the brief.

If they add something important, add it.

If something is still unclear, ask.

The goal isn't to get approval for a beautifully formatted document.

The goal is to make sure you're solving the right problem.

WATCH FOR THIS PHRASE:

"Just take a look and let me know what you think."

That's not a brief.

It's an invitation to guess what "look," "think," and "done" mean.

Before you start, turn the vague ask into something you can actually work against.

SEND IT

Send the brief before you start the work.

Ask the requester to confirm or correct it.

Then save it:

Clear Brief v1

HOW DID IT GO?

WHAT YOU JUST DID

You didn't start working faster.

You made sure you were working on the right thing.

That's an easy distinction to miss.

AI can help you produce something quickly.

It can't decide what your requester actually meant when nobody has agreed on it yet.

So before you ask AI to do the work, make sure you and the requester agree on the work.

Before you grab today's Field kit:

Tell us about your role and what you're working on so we can build workflows around the problems you're actually dealing with.

The brief came back approved.

So the work should be safe to start, right?

Not necessarily.

Because there's another problem:

The person asking for the work may not have fully figured out what they want either.

Thursday, we'll look at what happens when a brief gets a "looks good" — and why that isn't always confirmation.

TODAY’S FIELD KIT(CLEAR BRIEF):

Inside the Kit:

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