I’m having a problem with directions lately. There’s never a clear, concise description of what I need to do. There’s either a form with directions scattered all over the page like stock transaction forms (I’m trying to put money in my Roth IRA) or there’s some email thread I get put on where I have to read all the voluminous back-and-forth before I can figure out what’s really going on. And so very often I’m not getting it right.

I mean, is there some sort of tech writing program that tells you to write instructions like:

1. Do something.
2. Before you do the thing in step 1, do this other thing.
3. On in this special case, remember to do this before you do anything else.
4. These instructions weren’t really for the thing you want to do and now you have to call an 800 number where you’ll have to start punching in a lot of numbers and you’ll have to wait for at least 20 minutes.

So back to the Roth IRA. I used to go down to my bank and they’d have me fill out form after form. Then there was a period of time where I didn’t make much money and I didn’t put any money in the IRA (I know, bad idea). This year I had some money so I went to the bank and waited. And waited. And they told me that now I couldn’t do anything there, I had to call in and do it on the phone. When I called the phone number, I was told I had to do it all online. But instead of just filling out web forms, I had to print them out and fax them in. Is this progress?