Thursday again

Here's a scene from some months later. It's an example of how things might go, and I'm not promising it.

It's a Monday morning and your manager has asked for another summary, this time on the contract renewal, for the meeting on Thursday. You open a blank document and type four lines at the top. "For the team, to read before Thursday, so we can decide whether to renew for one year or three. A seven. Done means it gives the three options with costs, the risks of each, and my recommendation, in under two pages. Draft today, check tomorrow at nine, send by ten." You message your manager. "I'll have the renewal summary round by ten tomorrow."

You write it that afternoon. It takes two and a quarter hours. At the end it says what needs saying. There's a sentence in the risks section that you aren't fond of. You notice the wince, ask what a reader would trip over, and can't name anything. You close the laptop at half past five.

On Tuesday at nine you open it with your list beside you. The names are right. One of the costs is wrong. You'd typed the two-year figure where the three-year figure should be, and you catch it because "check numbers against source" is on the list and you're fresh. You fix it. The attachment is attached. It answers the question. You send it at twenty to ten, and you don't read it again.

By lunchtime two people have replied. One asks a question about the break clause, which you answer in three lines. The other has spotted that you wrote "principle" where you meant "principal". She mentions it cheerfully in passing, and you reply, "So I did, thanks." It costs you a second's wince and nothing else. On Thursday the meeting spends fifteen minutes on your summary, because everyone has read it, and the team chooses the three-year option you recommended.

On Tuesday evening, the one you'd once have spent on the fifth pass, you did something else. It doesn't much matter what you did with it.

Things won't always be this tidy. Some pieces of work will still get their hooks into you. There are readers who'll make you nervous, and weeks when the old routine looks like safety. But the wrong figure got caught, by a list and a fresh eye at nine in the morning. The old you might have caught it too, on the third or fourth evening, and might not have, tired and looking at commas.

Your standards are where they always were. What's changed is that they now do their two hours of good work and are allowed to stop. Your work was good enough all along. The difference now is that it goes out on time.

If you do one thing after closing this book, take the next piece of work that comes to you and write the four lines before you start. Tell someone when they'll have it. If there's a message to a person that you've been failing to write well enough, send the short plain version tonight.