Write your user manual.
Every product you use ships with a manual. The people you work with don’t. This is one honest page about how to work with you — the template, the prompts, and the harder part: the habit of actually reading each other’s.
The habit, not the page
Write · Trade · Read
Writing it is the easy part. A manual nobody opens is just a better ice-breaker.
The idea
A message is not what you said. It is what they heard, minus the context they didn't have, plus the mood they were already in. Telling people is half the job. Managing the context your words land in is the other half.
The practical antidote is to trade context on purpose instead of leaving it to luck. Ray Dalio's teams did it with “baseball cards”: a short, honest profile of how each person thinks, decides and communicates. Caleb Sima calls his a user manual, and his reasoning is hard to beat: every product and service you use ships with one, so why don't people — considering people are the most critical part of everything we do?
It is what every offsite ice-breaker was reaching for and almost never produced: a page that helps people actually know each other, accept each other's differences, and collaborate on purpose instead of by collision. Half of every misread would have been prevented by two paragraphs of mutual context.
One section matters more than the rest: how you are received, not just how you mean it. Your intentions are already in your head. The gap between them and how your words land is the thing nobody else can see — until you write it down.
The template
Eight sections, one page. This is the simple version; the extended one is below. Write in plain words, in your own voice. If a line could appear in anyone's manual (“I value open communication”), it isn't doing any work — replace it with the specific thing only you would write.
Print it, or paste it to your AI partnerUSER MANUAL: [name] Updated: [date] One honest page about how to work with me. 1. HOW I WORK Sharpest hours: ______________ Useless hours: ______________ Fastest channel to reach me: ____________ Response lag, honestly: ______________ What I need before a meeting to be useful in it: ____________ 2. HOW I COMMUNICATE — AND HOW I'M RECEIVED My style (in five words): ______________________________ The gap to warn people about — how it can land, not how I mean it: ________________________________________________________ 3. HOW I DECIDE Facts vs instinct: ______________ Certainty I need before I move: ____ % How to change my mind: ______________________________ Once I've decided, reopening it needs: ___________________ 4. GOOD AT — route these to me on purpose 1. 2. 3. 5. WHERE I FAIL — named plainly 1. 2. What helps when you see it happening: ___________________ 6. BAD NEWS — how to give it to me [ ] early [ ] direct [ ] written first [ ] live The thing that makes it worse: __________________________ 7. MY SILENCE MEANS: ________________________________________________________ 8. WHERE YOU STAND — how you'll know When I'm happy with your work, I: _______________________ When I'm worried, I: ____________________________________ TRADE RULE: share with the three people most affected by your work; ask for theirs. Reread theirs before hard 1:1s.
Two sections will be hard. Where I fail is hard because it's honest. My silence means is hard because you've never had to say it — and it's the one your colleagues most need. People fill silence with the worst available story.
One, filled in
A real-shaped manual. Notice what makes it useful: numbers instead of adjectives, a warning about how the style lands, and failures named plainly enough that a colleague could spot them in the wild.
A real-shaped manual, filled inUSER MANUAL: [a design lead] Updated: March 1. HOW I WORK Sharpest hours: 8–11am. I protect them; please do too. Useless hours: after 4pm. I'll agree to things I shouldn't. Fastest channel: a DM with the question in the first line. Response lag: same day for DMs, 2 days for email, honestly. Before a meeting: the doc, 24h ahead. I will not read it live. 2. HOW I COMMUNICATE — AND HOW I'M RECEIVED My style: short, visual, fast, a little blunt. The gap: my short replies read as annoyed. They aren't. If I write "ok." I mean ok. If I'm annoyed, I'll say so in words. 3. HOW I DECIDE Facts vs instinct: instinct first, then I go looking for facts that would prove me wrong. Certainty I need: 70%. How to change my mind: show me a user doing the thing. One recording beats ten slides. Reopening a decision: new evidence, not new opinions. 4. GOOD AT 1. Cutting a flow in half without losing what it's for 2. Unsticking a design review that's gone in circles 3. Explaining a trade-off to engineering in their terms 5. WHERE I FAIL 1. I say yes to too much and then go quiet instead of saying so 2. I redo work myself instead of giving the feedback What helps: ask me "what would you drop?" — out loud. 6. BAD NEWS [x] early [x] direct [x] written first [ ] live Worse: finding out in a meeting with my boss in the room. 7. MY SILENCE MEANS: I'm overloaded, not disapproving. Ping me twice; it's fine. 8. WHERE YOU STAND Happy: I stop reviewing your work and start forwarding it. Worried: I start asking to see drafts earlier.
The extended manual
One page is where to start, and for most working relationships it's enough. When it isn't — a new team, a new boss, a cofounder — there's a longer version. It has twenty-one fields in three groups: about me, how to work with me, and my professional profile. Trust gets two fields of its own, what gains it and what loses it, and feedback covers how you give it, how you take it, and how you like to be appreciated.
The full version, section by sectionUSER MANUAL (EXTENDED): [name] Updated: [date] The full version — the same fields as your profile in Ari. Fill the one-page manual first; come back here when it's too small. ━━ ABOUT ME — core beliefs and personal characteristics ━━ PASSION, VALUES & PRINCIPLES What motivates me, and the standards I hold myself — and the people I work with — accountable to. (Not goals. Not strengths.) PERSONALITY My traits and tendencies, and how they shape how I work. MBTI / Big Five / DISC / Enneagram results, if I have them. STRENGTHS My "super powers": 3-5 innate abilities people rely on me for. (Not technical skills — those go under Skills & Experiences.) GROWTH AREAS Not my strengths. Where I need to improve, or need someone to complement me. 3-5, honestly. CULTURAL BACKGROUND Context from my background that helps us understand and communicate with each other better. PERSONAL TIDBITS Interests, hobbies, fun facts — so you know me beyond work. ━━ COMMUNICATION & WORK — how to work effectively with me ━━ COMMUNICATION STYLE Tone: ________ Length: ________ 1:1 style: ______________ Urgency ladder: ______ > ______ > ______ > ______ Response expectations: _____________________________________ WORK STYLE How I do my best work: focus, energy, environment, how I learn. What energizes me: ____________ What drains me: ____________ WHAT GAINS MY TRUST 5-8 behaviors. (e.g. doing what you said, owning mistakes) WHAT LOSES MY TRUST 5-8 behaviors. (e.g. making things up, going silent) QUIRKS Things I do that can be misread — and what they actually mean. PET PEEVES Everyday things others do that get under my skin. FEEDBACK How I give feedback: ___________________________________ How I receive feedback: ___________________________________ How I feel appreciated: ___________________________________ MANAGEMENT STYLE (people managers only) How I lead, hire, and set expectations; the progress updates I expect from my reports — cadence, format, level of detail. LANGUAGES Preferred for work: ________ Others (and how well): ________ LOCATIONS & LOGISTICS Work arrangement: [ ] office [ ] remote [ ] hybrid ________ Availability & boundaries (after hours, weekends, emergencies): In person, I prefer: _______________________________________ ━━ PROFESSIONAL PROFILE — career and work ━━ SKILLS & EXPERIENCES Technical / Domain / Tools CURRENT ROLE Title and what I'm responsible for WORK HISTORY Where I've worked, briefly EDUCATION Schools, degrees, anything relevant CURRENT PROJECTS 3-7 things I'm working on right now
This is the same structure as your profile in Ari. There, you don't start from a blank page: Ari drafts each field from how you actually work — your meetings, messages and calendar — and you edit what it got wrong. Colleagues read it before they work with you, and so does Ari.
Write it with your AI partner
The blank page is the obstacle, and a good interviewer removes it. Paste this into your AI partner, answer one question at a time, and let it push back when you describe the person you intend to be instead of the person you are.
Have your AI partner interview youInterview me to draft my one-page user manual — the page that tells
colleagues how to work with me.
Rules:
- Ask ONE question at a time, and wait for my answer.
- Cover, in order: how I work (hours, channels, response lag), how I
communicate AND how I'm received, how I decide (facts vs instinct,
certainty I need, how to change my mind), what I'm good at, where I
fail, how I want bad news, what my silence means, and how people
know where they stand with me.
- When I give you a virtue ("I'm direct"), ask for its cost ("who has
that landed badly on, and how?").
- When I'm vague ("I'm responsive"), ask for the honest number.
- Don't flatter me. The page is useless if it only describes the
person I intend to be.
When we're done, fill in this template — plain words, my voice, no
corporate adjectives. (If I paste the extended template, work through
it one section at a time, same rules.)
[paste the template]Then do the part you can't do alone. You know how you meant things; the record knows how you behaved. Hand your draft and a month of your real messages to the mirror prompt. It is the closest you'll get to reading your own messages the way a tired, worried colleague does.
Check the manual against the recordHere is my draft user manual, and below it a sample of how I actually work: messages I sent, meeting notes, and review comments from the last month. [paste the manual] --- [paste the sample] Check the manual against the record. Be specific and quote the evidence: 1. Where does the record contradict what I wrote? (e.g. I say "same- day replies" — how long did replies actually take?) 2. Where might my words have landed differently than I meant them? Name the message and how a tired, worried reader might hear it. 3. What does the record show about me that the manual leaves out? 4. Suggest edits. Keep my voice. Do not make me sound better.
The machine drafts and checks. It can't decide to be honest for you — which lines stay, and which failures get named, is yours.
Trade it
A manual in a drawer does nothing. Start small: pick the three people most affected by your work, give them yours, and ask for theirs. Trade them in your next 1:1 — the conversation about where your two manuals collide is worth more than either page.
The note that goes with itSubject: How to work with me (and a request) I wrote a one-page manual on how I work — when I'm sharp, how I decide, how I like bad news, and what my silence means. It's short, and it's honest, including the parts I'm not proud of. You're one of the three people most affected by my work, so you get it first: [link] The request: would you write yours? Same page, one afternoon, no polish needed. I'll read it before our next 1:1 — and I'd like to talk about the places where we'll collide, before we do.
Your boss is one of the three more often than not. If they write one back, it becomes the first input to your map of the seat above you.
Actually read them
The writing isn't the hard part; an honest afternoon gets it done. The hard part is that everyone writes one — and, harder still, that everyone consults the other person's in the ordinary course of business: before the 1:1, inside the disagreement, in the reflection after the meeting that went sideways.
That's a memory problem, and memory problems are what machines are for. If an agent holds your calendar and your team's manuals — the Work OS does both — give it this standing brief:
A standing brief, so the manuals get readStanding brief: keep my team's user manuals in mind. The manuals are in [folder / doc]. Mine is [link]. 1. Before any 1:1 or meeting on my calendar, read the manuals of the people in it. Give me three lines: how each prefers to get information, the one place their style and mine are likely to collide, and what I should do differently because of it. 2. When I draft a message to someone who has a manual, check it against their manual before I send. Flag anything likely to land badly — quote their manual, don't guess. 3. After a meeting that went sideways, ask me what happened, then check whether a manual already predicted it. If none did, suggest the line someone should add. 4. Once a quarter, remind everyone to update their "Updated" date — and to change at least one line.
Keep the page true. Change the “Updated” date at least once a quarter, and change a line when you do. When someone says “I didn't know you…”, that's a line your manual is missing. Your weekly review is a good place to catch them.
Doing the right thing once is not hard. Doing it every time is.
From chapter 6 of Everyone Is a Manager Now, where the user manual is the second half of TRAM: telling people is half the job; managing the context your words land in is the other.
More field guides
Copy-paste playbooks you can run todayA private, file-based chief of staff you run in Claude Code — the TRAM loop as a folder of markdown.
A prompt pack that turns Claude into an org-health analyst — feed it your data, get the 21-point scorecard and spider chart.
The hand-it-to-Claude-Code build spec for a personal AI work OS — vision, a legible data model, a full prompt pack, and a phased build plan.
A one-page delegation brief — intent, context, constraints, definition of done, review plan. Brief a machine the way you’d brief a bright new hire.
A fifteen-minute weekly review on the FIT loop — Feel, Inventory, Target. The 1:1 you owe the first report on your own org chart.
For the manager whose boss still wants the deck: a map of the seat above you, a five-line weekly upward note, and seven scripts for selling the record upward.
Context, kept for you.
Write the manual on paper and you'll feel the difference in a week. Let Ari hold the context — who prefers what, what was said, how it landed — and every 1:1 starts already knowing.