[grawprog]

We had a similar one of those in school. The first question of the test was 'read all questions before you start.' Then it had stuff like poke holes in the paper, draw things, random stuff, the very last question though was,

'Now that you've read all the questions, just write your name in the top corner and turn your paper over.'

Yeah...a lot of my classmates ended up with holes and scribbles on their tests...

[ant6n]

It’s pretty ambiguous, though. In tests you usually complete all questions. Why should you in this instance only complete the first and the last task?

[lakis]

  When you are doing a safety check list, you don't skip and do whatever part of the checklist you feel comfortable doing. 
  You do it from top to bottom. 

  Multiple people have died in accidents because they focused on small issue ignoring the larger problem.

  So when it's time to check safety in scuba diving, you should better follow the instruction instead of doing whatever you want. 
  Example. There is no point to worry about "Is your mask clean?" when you are going to run out of oxygen and drown.

[dylan604]

If you are still unsure of the why, then you have had a fortunate life. There are many times you will get a set of "instructions" where somewhere something is wrong or incomplete, but you won't know that until you've worked your way through them. Ikea comes to mind. It is often very helpful to read through all of the steps involved first to make sure you actually have all of the parts/pieces you need and to make sure they make sense before starting. So I say again, that if you've never run into one of these situations, then you've been lucky.

[ant6n]

I’m not questioning that you should read all the questions, I’m saying it’s ambiguous what you should do if you’re given the following task list:

    1) read all tasks
    2) do x
    3) do y
    4) do z
    5) now that you have read all tasks, just write your name and do nothing 

I don’t understand why I should not do x,y,z. Task 1 is telling me to read all tasks, not to execute any. Why should one, when reading 5), decide to execute that particular one, but not the other ones?

To me, the correct procedure would be to read all tasks (task 1), then continue executing task 2), etc.

[grawprog]

The teacher also told us specifically to read everything before also doing anything.

[watwut]

1.) The complete set of instructions was inconsistent and mutually exclusive. The two questions required mutually exclusive actions. Why pick last?

2.) That is standard boilerplate typically said due to people not reading whole questions. And it is not useful advice in general.

[thaumasiotes]

I had one of those in fourth or fifth grade. It had items like "squawk like a chicken", making it obvious to everyone whether or not you read the directions.

[claviska]

I was one of the kids with holes in my paper. It taught me an immediate and memorable lesson. Attention to detail.