Until now, we’ve focused on calming the chaos of our internal voice. Now it’s time we talked about that other attention killer: external voices. And, because I like to cheat, their influence on our internal voice. One thing you can do this week: Understand the difference between objective obligations and emotions. Nothing new here Honestly, …
Category Archives: Articles
Attention management for writers, part 2: Plan your week, then your day
We tend to focus on planing one day at a time. And sure, we need to look at our plan in the morning (or the previous evening) and tidy it up. But we should also plan each week , either on Monday morning or, if you like spoiling your weekend, on Sunday evening. Some people …
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Attention management for writers, part 1.1: Forget about remembering
Intuitively, we know there are two things that destroy our attention: the voice in our head, and the voices of our colleagues (I am not qualified to tell you how – or whether – to ignore your kids). This blog series starts with the voice in our head. The one desperately trying to keep on …
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Attention management for writers: foreword
It’s been a year of working from home. For some writers – parents, mostly – it’s been a year of zero focus. But for others, it’s been a revelatory year. One that showed them what work looks like when they control their interruptions. When no one can walk up to their desk to ask a …
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This isn’t the job you were hired to do
When you start a new job, you can’t really work without a mental image of the job: “This is my role. This is what I should be doing and how I should be doing it.” But that image is about 90% wrong (yes, I made that number up), and you need to let go of it …
I Wonder That You Will Still Be Writing; Nobody Reads You
Agile got (at least) one thing right: stop writing documents no one’s ever going to read. If you want to honestly assess what will or won’t be read – and therefore what should or shouldn’t be written – you should answer some basic questions.
Don’t Let HR Block Your Next Technical Writer
First let me clarify – I’ve nothing against HR and their involvement in the hiring process. What I object to very specifically are two habits: letting HR choose who gets interviewed, and letting HR do the first interview and veto some of the candidates before they ever meet the technical writing team leader.
The Doomed Knowledge Transfer: Last Minute, Improvised Show and Tell
Leaving your job and training your replacement? There are four simple rules to effective knowledge transfer: create independence, work together, plan and give yourself the time to do these things. First and foremost: assume that you will not be available to answer any more questions after you leave. Even if you’re staying in the same …
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Lessons I Learned as a Tester, 7: Stop. Think.
In a lot of offices, if you’re not typing or clicking – you’re not working. It’s an odd view for any member of an industry that prides itself on thought and creativity. To analyse a problem, understand it and come up with a creative solution to it, you need to think about it. Thinking, for …
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UX Review: Emergency Measures
If you’re working on a product and have no particular understanding of UX, you can still do a basic UX review to stop the most obvious disasters. This will not be as good as getting a UX expert or experienced UX-QA to review the product, but it will be much better than nothing.
