Formats›An objective, in seven lines

An objective, in seven lines

A reusable format. Copy it, fill it, use it again — for a project of your own, for a class exercise, for anything you have been asked to make where nobody has said what it is. Nothing in it is specific to one course.

Download objective-format.md The file you fill in. Plain text — open it in any editor, or hand it to an agent.

What this is for

For when you do not know what the thing is.

You have a situation, or a topic, or a brief somebody handed you. What you do not have is an object. And every format that comes next assumes you do — a specification opens with THE THING, one sentence, no adjectives, and says nothing whatever about where that sentence is supposed to come from.

So this is the document that produces it. Seven lines, and the sixth is the sentence a specification begins with. The two interlock on purpose: this one ends where that one starts.

When a specification will not come, the trouble is usually not that somebody cannot write specifications. It is that they have not decided what the thing is, and no line anywhere had asked them to. The difficulty reads as a writing problem and is a deciding problem, which is why it does not get better by writing more.

Everything here is about the situation, not the object. No features, no materials, no interface. Those arrive later and they arrive from the specification.

The format

THE SCENE       where this happens, one sentence, no adjectives

WHO IS STUCK    the person, and what they are doing at the moment it goes wrong
AS IT STANDS    what happens now, said so somebody else could go and watch it
THE CHANGE      the one thing that should be different, and how you would see it
LEFT ALONE      what you are not touching, and why it stays
THE THING       one sentence — this becomes line one of the specification

NOT THIS        the bigger change you are ruling out while you still can

A scene above, a refusal below, and five lines between.

What each line is asking

THE SCENE. A real place with real people in it, in one sentence, and no adjectives. Not the problem area and not the topic. A clinic waiting room on a weekday morning is a scene; healthcare access is a category, and a category has no edges to design against. If you cannot name a place, you have chosen a subject rather than a situation, and everything below will stay general because there is nothing specific above it.

WHO IS STUCK. One person, and what they are doing in the moment it goes wrong. Not a demographic and not a persona. The test is whether you could have watched them do it. Somebody who writes young people or commuters has not been anywhere yet, and this line finds that out now rather than three weeks from now.

AS IT STANDS. What happens at present, written so somebody else could go and check whether you are right. This is the baseline, and without it the claim in the next line cannot be argued with by anyone, including you. Most first drafts go straight to what should happen instead — which is how a project reaches the end with no way of telling whether it did anything at all.

THE CHANGE. The one thing that should be different, and — the half people leave out — how you would see that it had. People would be more aware is not something you could see. One change. Two changes is two projects; if the two will not separate, that is the finding rather than a formatting problem.

LEFT ALONE. What you are deliberately not touching, and why it stays. Every situation has three or four things wrong with it, and the instinct is to fix all of them. Naming what stays is what makes the work finishable; saying why it stays is what stops it looking like an oversight you have to defend later.

THE THING. One sentence, no adjectives, and it is line one of the specification. This line is the point of the format — the other six exist to make it possible to write. If it will not come, the honest reading is that THE CHANGE is still a wish rather than an objective. Go back up and work on that, rather than writing something plausible here.

NOT THIS. The bigger, more attractive change sitting next to yours, refused while you still can refuse it. Not a disclaimer and not a limitations note — the thing this could plausibly grow into over the next two months, that you are ruling out now, in writing, before it starts looking like ambition.

A worked one

THE SCENE       A clinic waiting room on a weekday morning, thirty chairs and
                one door that a nurse opens to call the next name.

WHO IS STUCK    A man who arrived at 8:40, has been there ninety minutes, and
                stands up each time the door opens to see whether it is him.
AS IT STANDS    Nobody is told their position or how much longer it will be.
                People work it out by watching the door and counting who has
                gone in. Standing up is how you check, so people stand up a lot.
THE CHANGE      That you can find out where you are without watching the door.
                You would see it in whether people stop standing up.
LEFT ALONE      The order of the queue, how fast the doctor works, and that it
                is a nurse calling names rather than a screen. The waiting is
                not being made shorter.
THE THING       A number on the wall that changes when the door opens, and a
                slip with your own number on it.

NOT THIS        Appointments. The project is not going to become a way of not
                waiting.

Two things are worth reading twice.

LEFT ALONE refuses the two things anybody would most want to fix — the length of the wait and the order of the queue. Refusing them is what leaves a project that can actually be made, and the line says so rather than hoping nobody notices.

THE THING is smaller than THE CHANGE, deliberately. The change is an effect in a room; the thing is an object on a wall. A draft where those two sentences say the same thing has not yet taken the design decision — it has described the outcome twice.

How to use it

  1. Go and look first. THE SCENE and WHO IS STUCK are written from having been somewhere, and they are the two lines that cannot be reasoned out at a desk. If you have not been, write down that you have not — a blank is a finding.
  2. Write the seven lines alone, on paper, and leave blank whatever will not come.
  3. Read the top three to somebody who was not there. If they can picture the room and the person, those lines are done. If they ask what kind of place, you have written a category.
  4. Check THE CHANGE against AS IT STANDS. If somebody went back a month later, could they tell which one they were looking at? If not, the change is not yet observable and the rest of the project inherits that.
  5. Fill LEFT ALONE last, and make it hurt. The right answer usually includes the thing you were most looking forward to doing.
  6. Then start the specification, with THE THING as its first line.

Three ways an objective fails

The scene is a category. Sustainability on campus, mental health, the future of work. Everything downstream inherits the vagueness, and it stays invisible until quite late — because a general objective produces general work that looks like work until somebody asks what it does.

The change and the thing are one sentence. The effect is written twice and no decision has been taken. This is the common one, and it is why the worked example above is built to show it.

Nothing is left alone. The line is empty or it says nothing yet, so the project grows all the way to the deadline and arrives as four half-things. An empty LEFT ALONE is not a small omission; it is the absence of the only mechanism here that keeps the work finishable.

A deadline arrives whatever you do. A refusal made early is the thing that changes what is in front of you when it gets there.

Prayas Abhinav. Licensed CC BY 4.0 — copy it, change it, build on it, including commercially. Say where it came from, and if you changed it.

Take a copy: objective-format.md. Yours to alter.