Quit watching Claude work

Quit watching Claude work line by line.

Most people sit there and watch it. Every sentence appearing. Waiting for it to finish so they can read what they've got. That's not delegation. That's supervision.

The shift is in how you set the task.

Vague goals get vague outputs. "Improve my email" gives you a rewrite that's marginally better. "Draft a follow-up email to Thursday's proposal meeting using the notes in my CRM. 150 words. Direct and warm. Close with a clear next step" gives you something you can read once and send.

The definition of done is the whole game. It tells Claude what to aim at. Without it, Claude decides what finished looks like. That's fine for simple tasks. For anything complex, you want to define it yourself.

Claude can now verify its own work before it reports back. It checks whether the output meets the goal before it stops. This is the thing that makes walking away viable.

I use it for client reports and any document that needs multiple rounds of refinement. I describe what the finished version looks like: the sections it should include, the length, the tone, the things it must not do. I add the notes and transcripts it needs. Then I leave it.

By the time I check back, I have something that's 95% there. One read-through, a few edits, done.

If you have Claude Code, you can check in on your phone via the web without sitting at your desk. You don't have to be there. You just have to come back when it's finished.

Set the goal. Define what done looks like. Walk away.