Ask for the plan

Every coaching session I run opens the same way.

What have you worked on since we last talked?

Most of the time the answer is some version of this. I tried to get it to do the thing. It got close. Then I spent an hour trying to fix it.

And most of the time we end up in the same place. You started by asking for the finished thing.

Here is what I have watched happen over and over, with people who are plenty smart and plenty busy. AI is good at planning. Hand it the problem, ask for an approach, and you will get something worth arguing with. It is bad at revising something it already finished. Once the whole thing exists, every correction pulls on a piece that is holding up three other pieces. You are not editing at that point. You are negotiating.

I build costumes. You do not take scissors to fabric and then work out where the seam goes. You lay the pattern out first, because there is no un-cutting.

So here is the whole change, and it is small.

Before you ask for the thing you want, ask for the plan. Read the plan. Fix the plan. That is the cheap place to fix anything. Then tell it to go build.

Two extra minutes at the front. You skip the hour at the back.

If you lead people, this is also how you keep them from disappearing into a chat window. The plan is something you can look at together in a minute. The finished pile is not.

It is the first thing I teach almost everyone, before anything clever. Try it on the next thing you hand off.