Instructions are supposed to literally tell us what to do. In the UK (possibly just England, it’s hard to keep up) we were recently told that instructions are even stronger than guidance. At the very least, you expect them to be sort of helpful in some way. However, we often find that instructions tell us more about the people who wrote them than about the task at hand.
You hope that instructions will help you with some sort of difficult or confusing task. Someone has gone to the trouble of writing them out, or drawing a diagram. They have been written by experts, who you believe are trying to help you – hopefully the experts believe that too. But the only time you seem to get unambiguous instructions is when the task is so obvious you don’t need them. So instructions often turn out to be either unhelpful or unnecessary – you start out with high expectations and they let you down.
I found out about unhelpful instructions from model aeroplane kits, and then they kept turning up in adult life: car maintenance manuals, Swedish self assembly furniture, anything remotely related to software etc. And let’s not forget instructions from the government, which can be about important stuff like how to stay alive.
Hit it
When instructions seem to be illogical or incomplete, you might start to think that the problem is you. Perhaps there’s some key information that you need to understand before you start. This may be true – for example, there might be a reference to some sort of obscure tool. Much like the news.
Alternatively, you may not understand what the author really means, e.g. when a car workshop manual says “tap lightly with a soft hammer”.
What this instruction actually means is “Hit it. Hit it hard and keep hitting it. Like you really hate it, which you probably will after you’ve been hitting it for a while. There will be a dreadful clanging noise and you could hit your hand.”
The one thing you really don’t know is how to interpret their unhelpful instructions. Perhaps the author wants to avoid legal action if you hit something too hard and break it. Especially something like your hand.
Or perhaps the person writing the instructions assumes everyone surely must know certain things already. Stuff which most normal people actually don’t know, for perfectly good reasons. The experts make unrealistic assumptions about what you find obvious, based on what they find obvious. Like my maths teacher at school. Get the tone wrong, and they might even make you might feel stupid for not knowing.
This is not a helpful way to communicate. If you send a message, it’s your responsibility to make sure it makes sense to the person reading it.
Lost in translation – “Thank you for buying a Suzuki motorcycle”
In these days of Google Translate, some of the most frustrating (but entertaining) instructions are rare. Manuals translated from Japanese or Czech, which hadn’t quite made it all the way into English. The only words which made complete sense would be something like “Thank you for buying a Suzuki motorcycle” which became shorthand for word salad.
I know the author of my CZ 125 owner’s manual had a working knowledge of English. Whereas I don’t even know one single word in Czech – but that really is not the point. It was never my job to read or write anything in Czech. Whereas their job was to deliver helpful information to me, the English-speaking owner of a quirky motorcycle. Quirky, but not in a fun way. Like, there was an extra neutral between third and fourth gear for coasting down hill. Which it would somehow slip into while you were starting the engine, and stall when you tried to pull away.
Some of the suggestions in the manual would be alarming in any language. To clean the baffles of a two-stroke exhaust, take it to a “remote place” and set the tarry residue on fire. What could possibly go wrong.
A picture paints a thousand words, when you only need two
One way to get around confusing language business is to rely on diagrams – an approach which made IKEA furniture a byword for ease of assembly. (This has nothing to do with the IKEA effect, which we will meet another time.) Airfix pioneered this route when they finally stopped going on about about starboard ailerons, around 1970. They still forgot to mention that your finished MiG-15 model would be a tail-sitter if you just followed the instructions.
The Airfix 1/72 Dornier Do217E-2 again
Having picked up a preloved Airfix Do217 kit on eBay, I wanted to make sure nothing was missing. This meant guessing which kit part looked most like each numbered part on the instruction sheet. Things like wings and propellers were obvious but small components were tricky. But eventually, I managed to identify every teeny-tiny part. There were no bits missing or left over, which was the main thing. My glow of satisfaction lasted until a set of Ju88 decals turned up at the bottom of the box.
So for a variety of reasons, people who write instructions often miss things out. Things which are important to people who actually need instructions. Or there’s some hidden assumption, like you have a degree in computer science, or you can read minds.
You can go your own way/you spin me round
So to avoid disappointment, manage your expectations about how much genuine help any instructions will give you. In fact as a general principle, you can avoid disappointment by managing your expectations. Especially about things you expect other people to do.
Even if they do make sense, the official instructions may not be the best way after all. You might be able to work out something better yourself, ideally before going down a blind alley. For example, don’t fix propellers on model aeroplanes the way you’re told to. It’s better if they can be removed after the model is finished. Painting is easier and they’re less likely to get broken. There’s no glue involved, so they will definitely go round, round baby right round.
As my dad used to say, “when all else fails, read the instructions”. (He was a bit of a cynic but fortunately it didn’t rub off).