The essence of problems is when two ideas come into conflict with each other. Sometimes that’s the conflict between an explanation and a better explanation. Other times it’s the conflict between the current state of being and what you want. Without conflict, there is no problem.
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Links to this note
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Writing is the much-discussed secret to building great remote teams. How do you write for a remote team?
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What’s so Great About Michelangelo’s David
I am by no means an art buff but this is my explanation about what is so moving about Michelangelo’s David 500 years after it was made.
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Solution Disguised as a Problem
There is a tendency to write a problem statement as the problem you want to solve (i.e. the solution). For example, “We give users no guidance on X” is unlikely to be the problem statement rather than “users are confused”. The former is a solution disguising as a problem and the latter is actually the problem which may have many other solutions.
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Business Writing Should Always Answer a Key Question
An easy way to spot bad business writing is to check if it poses and answers a key question. Even a highly detailed document that goes to great lengths to explore a subject is not useful if it leaves it up to the reader to figure out what to do about it.