6 posts tagged with "Templates and Spreadsheets"

Infodumping is when you provide a whole lot of information all at once. It's a term that's been used for some decades when critiquing literature and has been adopted by autistic communities to refer to our tendencies to excitedly enthuse on a topic.

Documentarians (aka technical writers, content champions and word nerds) are prone to this trait. In some ways technical writing is an ongoing wrestling match with infodumping as we take on vast amounts of information, process and subject matter expertise and transform it into content that can be used and understood with greater ease.

In an increasingly remote world, our non-technical writing colleagues can find our facility for writing things down a little bit overwhelming. It can be especially frustrating for technical writing when even asking questions can trigger overwhelm in others as it floods their brain with new angles and questions. We can feel stuck in a bind where we're simultaneously told to ask questions, but also please don't communicate so much!

This is why when I was putting together the Neurodivergent Quality of Life Prioritization Matrix management of over enthusiastic infodump over chat was one of the first criteria I listed.

In this blog post I share some tips and tricks I find helpful, as well as some advice from fellow Write the Docs peers. We'll never get it perfect, but perfect is never the point.

If you want to jump straight into the Agenda and Minutes Template:

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

Minutes are important, and not just how we choose to use the finite amount of time we have in life. Minutes are recordings of decisions and discussions that occurred during a meeting. Done right, they are powerful and meaningful. As a technical writer, I've often used an agenda and minutes to drive decision making, make next steps clear and to manage my own enthusiastic use of workplace chat!

I have two strong opinions (aka hot takes? but is it really hot?). One is that technical writers have a vested interested in good meeting minutes and should just start writing them if the minutes are falling short.

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 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.