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Aurelius · Work & Leadership
Knowledge + Guidance

Why isn't my spec clear enough to build from?

You sit down to write the spec. You reread it five times. Something is still missing. Then someone asks a question the spec should have answered, and you realize you don't know the answer either. The spec did not fail you. It told you the truth. Every blank spot in that document is a decision you haven't made yet, wearing the costume of a sentence you haven't written yet. You keep editing the costume. Stop treating the document as the place where thinking happens. It is the place where a decision, already made, gets recorded so others can act on it. If you haven't decided, no amount of rewriting will make the page honest.

◆ How this problem reads on the two dials
GuidanceKnowledge
More coaching
Some to learn
1:1 with AureliusWith others (a Pod)
Mostly you & the coach
A little with peers
The diagnosis is short and simple to state, but the real change happens only when the reader forces the undecided choices into the open, which is coaching work, not teaching.
How the two dials adapt to you →
What’s really going on

Your spec is not unclear because you write badly. It is unclear because you have not decided what 'done' looks like. You are trying to decide and describe in the same sentence. Stop. Decide first. Write second. The words will come easily once the decision is made.

🔒 What you’ll build togetherUnlock by starting
A moveList the five decisions this spec must settle — as decisions, not as sections of a document.
A moveFor each one, say the answer out loud in a single sentence before you touch the page again.
A moveMark every paragraph that still feels fuzzy. That fuzziness is an undecided choice, not bad phrasing.
A moveFind one person likely to disagree with you, and ask them the decision directly — not 'can you review this.'
A moveSet a deadline for the decision itself, separate from the deadline for the document.

What changes unlock by starting

  • You can tell whether a spec is unclear because of a missing decision or a missing sentence.
  • You stop rewriting the same paragraph without knowing why it won't settle.
  • You bring fewer, sharper questions to the people who have to approve the work.
  • You finish specs faster, because you are no longer solving and writing in the same breath.

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One object, two jobs: a public answer to a real problem, and — the moment you start the chat — Aurelius’s live plan for your version of it.