This week I spoke independently with two early-stage entrepreneurs who were trying to figure out problems their respective businesses were facing. During our conversations, I realized they didn’t understand the real problem. They just knew they had a problem and wanted to solve it, but they couldn’t articulate it or tell me the root cause. This made it harder for me to help them as I wasn’t sure what I was helping them with and don’t have enough context because I’m not in either business day-to-day.

Both experiences made me think of Kidlin’s Law, a simple but powerful law:

If you write a problem down clearly, then the problem is half solved.

A powerful aspect of this simple law that many overlook is its writing component. It doesn’t say figure things out in your head or describe the problem out loud. It says you should write the problem down. You don’t have to think clearly to sound good when speaking, but writing demands clarity. When you speak, your brain can gloss over unclear steps and still produce a convincing narrative. Writing exposes those gaps. Writing a problem down forces you to evaluate each step of your thinking and understand the problem deeply. It also forces you to figure out the best way to communicate the problem clearly (and preferably concisely) to others. Once you’ve written it down in a way that others can understand, you’ve cemented your understanding of the problem in your brain and made it easier for you to speak coherently about the problem, with extreme confidence, to people who can help you. It should also make it easier for you to articulate precisely how they can help you, which increases the probability that they will help you (if people have to figure out how to help you, they usually don’t bother).

I’m a fan of Kidlin’s Law. It’s something simple that anyone can do, but most people won’t. For those who do, it improves the chances that they’ll solve whatever problem they’re facing.