Clarity is Expensive

Bad writing is cheap. Good writing costs time, energy, and patience.

I learned this the hard way when I was freelancing for a blockchain startup last year. The CEO sent me a "simple" brief for a whitepaper. Three pages of rambling thoughts, half-formed ideas, and technical jargon that meant nothing to anyone outside their engineering team. I spent two days trying to decode what he actually wanted me to write about.

When I finally delivered the first draft, he came back with extensive revisions. Turns out, he hadn't clarified his own thinking before giving me the assignment. His unclear brief cost both of us time we didn't have. The project that should have taken a week stretched into three.

Most people think writing is just typing words until you hit your target count. That's like thinking cooking is just throwing ingredients in a pot. You might end up with something edible, but it probably won't be good.

We Resist Clarity Because It's Hard Work

Here's what happens in most companies. Someone needs to communicate a decision, a strategy, or a process. They open their laptop, bang out whatever comes to mind, hit send, and consider the job done. Then three people interpret the message differently, two follow-up meetings get scheduled, and everyone wonders why nothing gets done efficiently.

I see this constantly in client work. A project manager sends a confusing email about requirements. The developer builds something that meets the literal description but misses the intent. The client gets frustrated because what they received doesn't match what they thought they asked for. Everyone blames everyone else, but the real problem was the original communication.

People resist spending time on clarity because they think it's optional. "They'll figure out what I mean" is the battle cry of lazy thinkers everywhere. But clarity isn't a nice-to-have feature of communication. When you skip it, you're forcing everyone else to do the work you should have done.

The most dangerous part isn't just that unclear writing wastes time. When you can't explain something clearly, you probably don't understand it yourself. I've caught this in my own work more times than I want to admit. I'll start writing about a concept, realize I'm circling around the point without landing on it, and discover that I need to think harder about