This essay started as a love letter to mindfully turning up. I wanted to write about the power that comes from turning up a little bit at a time consistently. As I attended to the work of blogging regularly it evolved to be a love letter to processes, structures, systems and their interconnections. This essay gives you a tour of philosophies and metaphors that may feel disconnected at first, but all feed into creating meaningful, effective work while avoiding burnout.

Due to the nature of this essay, I've only done minimal edits while typing. This essay is a love letter after all, and it wouldn't do to over work it!

Let's begin​

Over the last few blog posts, I've shared some resources for mindfully turning up for your docs and for yourself.

If you look at these resources you might get a sense of overwhelm. OMG, there's so much to do and I haven't done it all! It's easy for your mind to shut down and decide, if you can't do it all, what's the point?

If you want to jump straight straight into Search Term Analysis spreadsheet:

• Create your own copy
• Master document, where you can leave comments and provide feedback

About​

When we talk about content quality, findability is an important factor that extends beyond clean architecture. "Can the user find the data?" is a common question. Can the user find the data if they start with a Google search takes us deeper into this investigation.

At the Write the Docs Conference in Portland this year I gave a lightning talk on "Google Magic!" It showed how and get insight into your documentation in five minutes. Through this approach you can get a clearer understanding of your users and identify the most impactful ways to improve your docs.

This article goes into a bit more detail and provides a template for conducting several kinds of search term analysis.

Jump straight straight into the Neurodivergent Quality of Life Prioritization (NQLP) Matrix:

• Create your own copy of the NQLP
• Master document, where you can leave comments and provide feedback

Creating a framework to manage the brain weasels​

Whenever life doesn't go to plan, there is an opportunity to self reflect and find opportunities to learn and grow. This is a useful habit to cultivate and can turn adversity into an alchemical experience.

What is not helpful, is to look at the data, look at all the variables that go into being a human and come to the conclusion that you are a trash human/need to improve across all the criteria. This is especially challenging when you're not even sure what the criteria are, or perhaps the criteria changes as you analyze yourself from different angles.

Searching for work in 2025​

This blog post covers two topics:

• The state of things
  • What it's like to be a technical writer right now and how we can carve out better spaces for ourselves.
• Prioritization matrix
  • Skip straight down to this to get going with a tool that can make it easier to pursue your job search or career change dreams.

Welcome to my new technical writing blog.

First, a big shout out to the following thought leaders who have encouraged more technical writers to share their knowledge and opinions.

• Fabrizio Ferri Benedetti
  • Terrific human whose blog posts stir conversations and help us build a better vocabulary for what we do.
  • Technical writing has a depth issue is a powerful call to action for more of us to step out of the shadows and own our expertise.
• Not-Boring Tech Writer Podcast
  • In particular, The craft of technical writing with Marcia Riefer Johnston talks about the snowballing power of sharing a small tidbit of information and then building on it.
• Write the Docs Slack
  • Write the Docs is a global community of people who care about documentation.
  • The Slack channel contains a lot of expertise. It's been great to hear all the different voices and it is why I went to my first Write the Docs conference.
• Write the Docs, Portland (USA)
  • A wonderful annual conference for documentarians (be they technical writers, programmers, managers, project managers, user support agents or wild enthusiasts).
  • At the conference this year (2025) I shared multiple frameworks with folks and gave a Lightning Talk. These topics will form the basis of my initial blog posts.

Over the coming weeks I'll share various tools and tricks for analysing your docs and getting insights into your users and products. I'll also share some resources for a more holistic approach to the work we do. When we think about content quality, we often focus on the docs themselves, when workplace environments and physical humans need just as much attention.

If you have thoughts, feedback or ideas you'd like me to expand on, you can email me at liz@lizargall.com or create an issue in the GitHub repository of this website. If issues ever need to be moderated I'll use the Write the Docs Code of Conduct as the framework, AKA don't be a jerk.

If you use any of my ideas and would like to share how they're going for you, I'd love to hear from you as well.

Thanks to my fellow documentarians, you make it a pleasure to write for.

If you'd like to get an email every time there's a blog post, subscribe to my technical writing mailing list.

Good things,

Liz

liz@lizargall.com

11 May 2025