Clarity
Cutting through noise to find truth
Clarity is the ability to see through complexity, strip away the inessential, and identify what truly matters. It represents focus, simplification, and the courage to say 'no' to distractions. In a world of information overload and competing priorities, Clarity is the discipline of distinguishing signal from noise, essence from decoration, and truth from comfortable illusion.
Core Question
"What is the essential truth, and what is merely noise?"
Beacons
Beacons are guiding principles that help you apply this rune to real decisions.
Simplification
Can we remove elements without losing meaning? Clarity emerges through subtraction, not addition.
Focus
What single thing matters most right now? Clarity demands prioritization and the courage to ignore the rest.
Transparency
Are we being honest about what we know and don't know? Clarity requires intellectual honesty.
Signal vs. Noise
What information is actionable versus merely interesting? Clarity filters for relevance.
Core Truth
What remains when we strip away all assumptions and decoration? Clarity seeks bedrock reality.
Practical Examples
Diagnosing why a product isn't gaining traction
Invoke Clarity to cut through competing theories: ignore vanity metrics, focus on user behavior data, identify the one bottleneck preventing growth, and test that hypothesis directly.
You discover that the product is excellent but the onboarding is confusing—a clear, solvable problem rather than a vague 'product-market fit' issue.
Communicating a complex strategy to the organization
Apply Clarity to distill the strategy to its essence: identify the one core objective, the three key initiatives, and the single metric that indicates success. Remove everything else.
People understand and remember the strategy because it's simple enough to fit in their heads, leading to aligned execution.
When to Use Clarity
- When overwhelmed by information or competing priorities
- When communication is unclear or misunderstood
- When strategy lacks focus or tries to do too much
- When diagnosis requires cutting through symptoms to root causes
- When simplification would increase impact
Related Runes
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