EVERYONE knows the telephone game. I would argue that the telephone game is a subclass of a greater phenomenon that insidiously impacts the quality of our lives. This phenomenon can be characterized by what I’ll call the great fuzziness problem of the human brain. Lets look at this problem through an example. Say I were to recite 20 three digit numbers for you (person 1) to remember, then share with a friend (person 2) one day later. When the friend (person 2) reports back on what those numbers were, not only would some amount of numbers be missing, other number would be just wrong. Some of these discrepancies would be generated by person 1, others by person 2. This is a simplified and illustrative demonstrate of the great fuzzy and lossy nature of the human mind.

DESPITE this seemingly trivial and obvious reality, we live and work with this unfortunate truism, often with the bliss of complete oblivion on how responsible this characteristic is for many negative aspects of our experience.

HOWEVER, there is great news! There is a solution that is trivial to implement and perfectly addresses this great fuzziness problem. All that is needed is the self awareness of the fuzziness culprit. Lets look at this solution in the context of the prior example. Say at the moment I began reciting the 20 three digit numbers to person 1 of the scenario above, that person scribed down each number in a shared document. Then a link to that doc was sent to person 2, and person 2’s report back is simply a sharing of that link back. The great fuzziness is completely eliminated with this solution technique.

THIS SOLUTION generalizes to the act of writing things down in a centralize location of truth. Such a centralized system of record, is objective, not lossy, and doesn’t leak information or fidelity over time (as is the deficit of every human brain). As a bonus, it also reduces future efforts in communication as such a system of record communicates itself through the written word. Our person 2 in the example above has to spend no time effortfully recalling and reciting.

LET us acknowledge whether its a doc, piece of paper, spreadsheet, slide deck, back of my hand that I don’t wash for as long as I need it, ClickUp, Jira, etc. The key is that it is using the core transformational technology of our species, which is it is written.