The Work Strategy Document
The Questions That Turn Claude Into a Real Collaborator
The first two documents were for you. The Personal Constitution gave you language for who you are. The Goals Document turned that into what you want.
This one is for Claude.
Not entirely — you’ll learn things about yourself in the process. But the Work Strategy Document has a different job: giving Claude the context it needs to stop responding generically and start responding like someone who actually understands your work.
Five questions. Let’s get into it.
Q1: WHAT YOU ACTUALLY DO
In the simplest possible terms: what do you do professionally, and what is the end result of your work? What do you actually deliver or hand off?
This sounds easy until you try to answer it without jargon, without title-speak, without the version you give at a cocktail party. Strip all of that away and something useful emerges: the actual output of your work and who receives it. A writer delivers words that move people to act. An engineer delivers working code, reviewed and shipped. A teacher delivers knowledge. Simple, specific, and exactly what Claude needs to stop making things up about your context.
Q2: HOW YOU COMMUNICATE
How do you communicate in your work? What does good communication look like in your field, and what does bad look like?
Most people discover they have strong opinions here they’ve never bothered to articulate. Good communication: specific briefs, defined deadlines, requests in list format. Bad: vague direction, last-minute changes, assumptions left unspoken. Once Claude knows your standards, it can match them and flag when something falls short.
Q3: WHERE YOUR TIME GOES
Which parts of your work take up most of your time and energy? Which do you find most satisfying, and which do you find most draining?
The honest answer here is usually more interesting than the expected one. Most satisfying: finding the right angle on a piece, shipping something that works, the moment something clicks for a student. Most draining: endless approval rounds, unclear requirements, administrative paperwork that exists to document rather than improve. Claude can’t eliminate the draining parts, but it can do more of them for you.
Q4: WHO YOU SERVE AND WHO YOU DON’T
Who benefits from your work? And what is explicitly out of scope for you — what do you not handle?
Two questions in one, and both matter equally. The first clarifies your purpose. The second clarifies your limits. Most people spend years defining what they do and never once define what they don’t, which is exactly how scope creep happens and why saying no is hard. Write it down and you have permission to enforce it.
Q5: YOUR IDEAL DAY
If you could redesign how you spend your working hours, what would you do more of? What would you eliminate entirely?
More deep writing time, fewer revision cycles. More architecture and problem-solving, fewer status meetings. More one-on-one time with students, less grading that doesn’t improve anyone’s learning. Whatever you put here, Claude can start optimizing for it, which is the whole point of building this document in the first place.
YOUR SMALL MOVE THIS WEEK
Answer Q1 only. One paragraph: what do you do, and what do you actually hand off?
That single answer, shared with Claude at the start of any work conversation, will change what comes back.
Next week we put all three documents together and talk about what happens when the whole system is running.
Until next week —
Nela