What are the directions when you have an equation?

What type of equation? I'm assuming you may mean PEMDAS (Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication/Division, Addition/Subtraction), meaning that when solving an equation first you solve anything that's in parenthesis. After that you do exponents and then either multiplication or division, going left to right if there are multiple parts of the equation that require you to do multiplication or division. Then you move on to addition and subtraction, the same rules with multiplication and division apply. Hopefully I explained this well.