You will start writing (more) at work after reading this post
Paper is everything
During school, I learned a valuable lesson from my father that changed the way I looked at work interactions altogether. His advice was simple:
If you have something important to discuss with someone, write it down properly, and hand it over to them at the right time during your conversation.
This advice has come in handy countless times over the years. Most people, when handed any document, will glance over it and visually skim it to extract whatever they can. You can use it to lay down the foundation for your conversation or to summarize it if you hand the document over at the end.
All things considered equal, the better your document, the better your interaction will be. A document enhances your conversation in ways that just speaking or showing a presentation can’t.
In today’s remote world, however…
“Paper” is not everything
Things change in the virtual world. We can’t really hand people documents, but we can absolutely share internal wiki links and increase the chances of our conversations being crisp and fruitful. In fact, if you are not creating documents for important work conversations, you are missing out a lot more than you would imagine.
The good news is that writing for work is far simpler than creative, or free form writing because it falls under a few predefined use cases and structures. At the end of this article, I will share a few tips (using templates) to help you navigate these.
Spending some time writing good documents (and work messages) magnifies the impact of your core work.
Working without writing effectively is like watching a movie on your phone. It’s not really problematic — but it will never be the same as watching it on a large screen with surround sound.
There are a plethora of reasons for why we should write at work. Let’s look at a few of them.
#1 Write to discover
I write to discover what I know
— Flannery O’Connor
Let’s say you run into an issue while working. You look it up online. If you don’t find an answer on the usual websites, you scour the internet looking for other potential leads.
If nothing works, you dreadfully start typing out the question on a relevant forum. If you don’t ask the question properly, you will probably be down-voted to hell.
As you are organizing what you know to convey information to other people in a coherent manner — you often stumble upon a solution, or at least a potential solution.
There is something about writing to convey information to others, and exposing what we know that forces us to discover any hidden gems in the knowledge that we might have.
Many things you write will often just be archived, never to see the light of day. Their only purpose was to enable you to reach a newer level of understanding. What’s coherent to others from your writing will be crystal clear to you.
#2 Write to empower
A lot of times, we want an immediate solution to our problem. Since we’re not in the right headspace, a lot of us often end up sending messages that offer no useful information. Things like:
“I have a problem. Please help me?”
Instead of this, if we spend a few minutes writing down what we need, and organizing it, wouldn’t everyone’s lives be easier?
When people see that you wrote a document outlining the issue properly instead of saying “Help, please,” they will be far more inclined to help you out voluntarily.
By writing things down, you help other people help you better. You set them up to succeed on their quest to solve your problem, and although you have to take some efforts, the reward is more than worth it.
#3 Write to start conversations
During remote work, we usually interact with people purely for work purposes. What happens if you do have something interesting to talk about, though?
Well, you should create a document in your company’s internal wiki and share it with the people who might be interested.
This is fundamentally different from a conversation at the lunch table or a quick message on Slack. It’s different because you’ve taken the time to gather your thoughts and present them carefully — a luxury that spontaneous conversation doesn’t allow us.
This document also serves the purpose of starting a publicly (or internally) available, collaborative document. It’s a living document. People can comment on it, leave their thoughts, and eventually, it can turn into an actionable document. If it doesn’t, you will have a why for it, and the conversation will get the closure it needs.
The living document is a place that you (or anyone else) can get back to later with a simple search. It creates a platform for others to build on top of. It brings far greater visibility to whatever you have to say.
And most importantly, it has greater chances of becoming something.
#4 Write to guide
The act (and art) of documenting isn’t looked at very positively. I have seen people being fearful of having to document something or simply procrastinate over it for weeks.
The word “documentation” just feels bulky, and a lot of us link it to large books with obscure information that is difficult to comprehend.
Real documentation, good documentation, is quite the opposite. It’s supposed to be light, easy to read, and it should act as a simple guide. There’s no need for large word counts. You aren’t writing to impress. You are writing to guide others.
If you are aware of a process that can help at least one other person, there’s no excuse to not write a guide for it.
In fact, documentation is a form of automation.
The reason we don’t look at it this way is because we don’t write code when we document. But for all intents and purposes, a good guide acts like a software that is designed to save other people’s (and often your own) time.
#5 Write to advertise
Talking about the work we do is often times as important as the work itself. The best way to “talk” about our work is to usually write about it.
If you are allowed to share it publicly, you should write a blog post explaining what you are working on. If not, you can write an internal wiki post for the people in your company.
By doing this, you provide potential future collaborators with context about your work, while instilling yourself with a greater sense of purpose. If you write multiple posts, they can also act as a progress log, helping you introspect and course-correct, especially for large projects.
This is also useful on abstract projects that are difficult to explain to all stakeholders. With a few short posts, you can outline the problem and solution in a way that most people can understand, highlighting the value that you are creating with your work.
#6 Write to fail (or succeed) faster
Usually, when we have ideas — they seem brilliant at first glance. But each idea comes with its faults and issues. There are always unknowns to account for.
When you write these ideas down and share them with people, they can provide you with unique perspectives. These perspectives can help you potentially ditch the idea before you invest too much time in pursuing something that was bound to fail.
Conversely, each new perspective can solidify your idea, creating new iterations that are more polished and feel battle-tested. All of this, though, starts with you writing it down carefully and asking others to validate what you think will work.
#7 Write to formalize decisions
Documenting decisions can often be an after-thought.
How many people over the course of the last few decades must have said, “Of course we’ll remember it. We decided it!”
Maybe you will remember it. But what about those that come after you? How will they know what you had in mind when designing a system or figuring out a vision for your product?
Writing down decisions allows for all stakeholders in a project to get more transparency about what’s going on. In asynchronous, remote work environments, this is a must-have. If your team decides something while you are away, there has to be a way for you to find out without having to run into a speed bump.
Good decision documents leave behind a trail of “Why’s” that anyone interested in can pick up and build on top of.
Writing takes effort. It takes time. But it can help you create the kind of impact that just “doing your work” can’t. Maybe I have convinced you that you need to write (more) at work, but it’s possible that you’re feeling a little lost.
To give you a head-start, I’ve curated a few (free) templates. Any time you feel like sending someone an obscure “Can you help me?” or you feel like you have a great idea, but you want to present it in the right way— use these templates to set yourself up for success.
Templates for writing at work
…you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It’s just the same enemy — blank paper.
- Jimmy Breslin
Asking for help on an issue
Google doc template
Proposing an idea
Google doc template
Writing a simple guide
Google doc template
I will try to add more templates to this as I get time. These are some of the most useful and common ones that I tend to rely on. You can change or get rid of the headings you don’t need. The important part is keeping the content and the overall structure.
