I'd Rather Be Writing » enthusiasm

Aligning Yourself with a Cause

Tom Johnson — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 05:24:57 +0000

At a department Christmas social the other week, we had a special meeting following lunch. During the meeting, people spontaneously shared their feelings about working for the Church or other thoughts they had. More than a dozen people stood up.

Although it wasn’t called such, the meeting was similar to a “testimony meeting,” which is something that Mormons do once a month for their church meetings. During these meetings, rather than listening to several members give talks, anyone who feels the desire can spontaneously walk up to the front podium and say pretty much whatever they want for as long as they want. This can be both exciting and dangerous, or dreadful and dull, depending on who gets up and what they choose to say.

Some testimony meetings are inspiring. Others are filled with long spaces of tense silence. At work, whenever we allow people to share their thoughts or feelings at the end of meetings, it highlights the interesting mixture of church and work — a mixture that feels new and sometimes awkward.

As I read up on the subject, it turns out that spirituality in the workplace is nothing new. In fact, it’s a huge trend in business management. Marques et al even say that “spirituality is the new competitive edge” (Spirituality in the Workplace).

Spirituality a “competitive edge”? Yes, but they’re not talking about spirituality in the sense of religion. Their definition of spirituality is broader. In their usage, spirituality is the desire to connect with a higher purpose and meaning. It’s the yearning to be part of something larger than yourself, or to find a calling that guides you. Marques et al say some define spirituality as “the way we orient ourselves toward the divine.” Others describe it as “an individual search for meaning, purpose and values which may or may not include the concept of a God or transcendent being.” In other words, spirituality can encompass many characteristics, but overall it’s the desire to align yourself with a higher purpose and meaning.

If you have this sense of spirituality about your work, you’ll be more dedicated and hard-working. You won’t do below-average work or spend all afternoon playing ping-pong and surfing the net, because you believe in what you’re doing. It’s not just a 9-5 job to you anymore. It’s a mission. You have purpose from the inside.

Alignment with the Cause

Instilling a sense of spirituality in the workplace is similar to aligning workers with a cause. If you can get buy-in for the cause, you boost performance. This makes logical sense, and researchers Giacalone and Jerkiewicz even say “data unequivocally suggests that spiritually based organizational cultures are the most productive” (Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Organizational Performance).

Some organizations and companies can tap into a cause more easily than others. Disneyland employees, for example, often work at a lower salary than at other companies just so they can be part of the magic and imagination of Disney. When they walk into the Magic Kingdom each morning for work, they’re connecting with something greater than themselves. They’re working in the kingdom, making unforgettable experiences for people.

You don’t have to work at Disney to find a cause. Bill Pollard, CEO of Servicemaster, relates the story of a community hospital housekeeper named Shirley who gets excited about mopping and cleaning because she’s not “just cleaning floors.” She “sees her job as extending to the welfare of the patient in the bed as an integral part of a team supporting the work of doctors and nurses — she has a Cause — a Cause that involves the health and welfare of others.” (qtd. in Inspire!).

In other words, in her mind, she’s not just doing janitorial work. She’s cleaning bed pans and mopping floors so doctors can help patients return to health, so that patients can get well and rejoin their families with a full life.

Almost any company has a worthy cause you can believe in. My last three jobs involved working for a biochemical weapons testing facility, a large financial firm, and a nutrition company specializing in protein for triathletes. Although I didn’t always keep it in mind at the time, in the larger sense I helped protect the nation from terrorists (perhaps) by increasing the IT system administrator’s understanding of data storage techniques for housing video test data. I helped financial analysts increase the retirement funds, 401(k) portfolios, and other savings plans of thousands of citizens so they could lead more financially comfortable lives. I helped triathletes replenish their depleted muscles with protein so they could achieve their gut-wrenching physical goals of swimming, 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and running 26 miles.

But while I was involved in each of those companies, very rarely did I consider my alignment and participation in the cause. Mostly I was caught up in the details of documentation and missed the larger picture.

Aligning with Your Calling

If you work for an organization whose cause inspires you, such as Disney, or your church, you can hop on board the organization’s cause and find meaning and purpose no matter what your role. But sometimes your company or organization is more mundane – for example, a circuit manufacturer.

You could tell yourself that you’re not just writing instructions. You’re helping computer manufacturers build more power-efficient motherboards so that people don’t have to wait so long for pages to load. But despite this cause, sometimes it’s not quite strong enough to lift you through the dull moments.

When your organization lacks a compelling cause, you can at least take comfort in the idea that you’re pursuing your calling or vocation. For example, no matter what you’re creating as a chemist, if chemistry is your calling, just working in the lab doing chemistry might ignite you.

For many technical writers, as long as they’re working with the written word, crafting and shaping sentences, clarifying ambiguity, describing complex setups with a grace that taps into their core talent, it’s okay if their company’s cause bores them. It’s all right because they’re pursuing a career they love. They’re aligned with their calling.

And when you’re aligned with your calling, Pollard says “a creative power is unleashed that results in quality service to the customer and the growth and development of the people serving.”

The Problem

Aligning with your calling is ideal, but this can be an issue for technical writers, because almost no one feels that technical writing is a calling. In Technical Writing: Career or Calling?, Scott Nesbitt writes, “I believe that technical writing is a career — a career that can be interesting and rewarding. But it’s definitely not a calling.”

In Is Technical Writing Your Calling?, Michael Harvey also agrees that technical writing isn’t a calling. He writes, “I don’t think that writing installation manuals, product guides, or help panels is a calling. It’s a job — an enjoyable career if you’re good at it. The underlying activity — clearly communicating complex concepts or procedures to help someone get work done — feels close to a calling.” But it’s not a calling in the sense that you would leave everything to do it.

In a guest post I wrote for DMN Communications, I explored more or less the same topic. I concluded that technical writing isn’t something you can be unstoppable about, like you can with a calling. But if you hook into a related sphere that ties in closely with tech comm., such as film or story or code or illustration, and that’s your calling, you can use that passion to convert your job into something more meaningful.

A Creative Solution

Rather than looking at ways to find a calling in your current work, which can be an endless chase, Lance Secretan, former CEO of Manpower Inc., suggests a reverse strategy: apply your existing calling to your work.

For example, an ex-helicopter pilot once contacted Secretan for work. Secretan asked the pilot what his calling was. He said he loved to fly and used to transport people to the North Sea oil rigs off the main coast of Scotland during the economic boom in that area. Secretan ended up forming a new company to help service oil rigs with fleets of helicopters.

Secretan’s strategy is to find people passionate about a calling, and then “to align their Calling with our Cause, so they could create magical careers for themselves, while, at the same investing in our cause.” In other words, rather than try to inspire employees with a new passion or calling, he uses the existing passions or callings of his employees to grow his company (Inspire!).

So if you don’t find your calling in technical writing, try Secretan’s strategy: figure out what your calling is, and then bring that passion to your technical writing role.

For example, Michael Pick has a background in film. I assume this is what he’s passionate about, rather than creating help tutorials. But he brings his passion for film to his role as a technical communicator for WordPress by creating mesmerizing screencasts.

Another example: You might have a passion for creative writing. Rather than minimizing your calling as a creative writer, integrate your passion with your technical writing role. You could create scenario-driven help, where your characters (played by imagined users) encounter problems and you explain the solutions. You could write story-driven blog posts about your product for your corporate website. You could take special care to ensure that each button and interface label resonates with the clarity and precision of poetry.

One activity I enjoy is building websites. Rather than leaving my passion behind and relegating myself to the standard tech comm. tools, I can breathe passion into my tech writing role by creating and branding web platforms to publish my help (such as what I’ve done with Mediawiki).

But let’s say your real passion seems to have nothing to do with technical writing. You’re a helicopter pilot with a history of transporting soldiers to and from the field of combat. How would you integrate that passion into your role as a tech writer? The solution is simple: Look for work in the helicopter industry, writing manuals for helicopter pilots. And then immerse yourself in usability, interviewing and observing helicopter pilots in their own environment to assess their tasks and needs.

However you do it, find your calling and integrate it into your work.

Conclusion

The most fulfilling jobs occur when you are aligned with both the organization’s cause and your calling. This is why the engineers and other IT professionals at my work can stand up and share special feelings they have for their jobs. Many get up and say that it’s “night and day” compared to previous jobs they’ve had, and so on.

But any job can have the same spiritual underpinnings, as long as you believe in your organization’s cause (or as long as you remember how your work fits into the larger picture), and as long as you find a way to integrate your calling into your role.

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STC Toronto’s New Five-and-Five Chapter Model

Tom Johnson — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:19:59 +0000

Download MP3
Length: 26 min.

In this podcast, I talk with Anna Parker Richards, incoming president of the STC Toronto chapter, about their event-driven chapter model, in which they replace regular meetings with periodic all-day events, charging between $50 to $150 per person.

They haven’t entirely discarded meetings in favor of events, but have instead supplemented the events with social gatherings. Their new model, the Five and Five Model, has five events and five socials throughout the year. Each of their events has a specific focus, such as Career Day (targeted to students), a Tech Trends Evening, Education Day, Management Day, and an Annual General Meeting. If you’re looking to put new life into your chapter, try modeling your program after STC Toronto.

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The Interview Question You Should Always Ask – Conversation Starter – HarvardBusiness.org

Tom Johnson — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:07:51 +0000

The Interview Question You Should Always Ask – Conversation Starter – HarvardBusiness.org.

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What I See — James Hall’s Essays and Florida

Tom Johnson — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:05:49 +0000

James Hall's book of essays, "Hot Damn"

On my father’s recent visit from Florida, he brought me a stack of books, one of them James Hall’s collection of essays, Hot Damn!

James Hall is a poet and crime novelist, but he once wrote essays for a newspaper for several years. This book is a collection of those essays.

The topics of Hall’s essays range widely — from adventures in Florida to experiences as a boy in a library, to buying a house, to eating Cheetos while watching sports. But one theme is consistent throughout: the celebration of life. Falling in love with something. Getting excited about an adventure or place that others might simply regard as ordinary.

I believe this attitude is something I’ve largely forgotten. Let me excerpt a few paragraphs that demonstrate his love for life, especially Florida.

In “Home at Last,” Hall explains that he turned down the Air Force Academy to attend Florida Presbyterian College — not for religious reasons, but to escape in to Florida:

I did four glorious years of college in the charming and soporific Satin Petersburg of the sixties. On holidays I explored the west coast, the Keys, camping at starkly primitive Bahia Honda, building bonfires on midnight beaches, discovering out-of-the-way taverns that served cheap pitchers of beer and spectacular cheeseburgers, bays where fish jumped happily into frying pans, the unair-conditioned piano bars in Key West where writers huddled in the corners and talked the secret talk. I had never felt so at home.

In “Florida Trifecta,” spending time near ancient ceremonial grounds, Hall writes,

As my psychic tuning fork hummed, we drank a beer together on a peak overlooking one of the assembly plazas and were quieter than we would have been almost anywhere else on earth. I no longer cared if we went over to Cabbage Key. This was fine. We could stay there all afternoon, standing shoulder to shoulder with the ghosts of our noble forebears who knew and loved this land when its waters were crystalline and dense with fish, its breezes uncontaminated and dense with fish, its breezes uncontaminated by the noise or particulates.

In “The Names of Things,” Hall describes a walk on the seashell-full beaches of Sanibel island:

Lace murex, wentletrap, lightening whelk, junonia. The names are as exotic and various as their shapes. Cones and tulips and angel wings, baby’s ears and worms. Their bright colors litter the beach before me and crunch underfoot. With every step down the sugary sand I cringe with guilt at the possibility that I am destroying hundreds of rare specimens.

In “Winning Me Over,” Hall drives through the Everglades:

It was nearly a quarter of a century ago that I first journeyed west out Tamiami Trail and fell instantly in love with that broad and water expanse of sawgrass and anhingas and alligators. What struck me on that first trip was the way the vast and mesmerizing distances seemed to open up immediately after passing beyond the city limits of Miami. At that time I did not yet know the name of a single bird or bush or tree, and my eyes were not yet attuned to the nuances of that profoundly understated landscape, yet I sense the aching silence, a mysterious, almost sacred hush that seemed to resonate from the immense spread of sky and land.

In almost every essay, Hall’s love of life comes through:

In “Nude Woman in the Grass,” he describes the experience of being gripped by a book for the first time.
In “Dream House,” he narrates a house he fell in love with, purchased, and lived in for eight years.
In “Touchy Feely,” he celebrates the sense of touch in vivid, prolonged ways.
In “Hemingway,” he sees past the flaws that critics point out in Hemingway and values him for his character.

Hall also has a good dose of wit and sarcasm, and the essays are far from any kind of inspirational writing. But in almost every essay, there’s an aesthetic component that uplifts me. The way he sees an experience, or describes a place or person, has an element of rapture with life.

I think remarkable literary writers have this same celebration of life inside them. Think of Walt Whitman, who, in Song of Myself, wrote passages like,

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what
is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

Finding this attitude isn’t about looking on the positive side, or avoiding negative gossip or criticism. It’s about looking in to the ordinary and seeing something moving and alive. It’s about learning to marvel at what others regard as plain.

Perhaps Hall’s essays resonated so strongly with me because of my time in Florida. Hall moved from Kentucky to Florida, and then spent the next thirty years of his life there. I must admit that I never viewed Florida as a literary paradise. It’s hot, muggy, and subject to urban sprawl like any other place. But that’s not what Hall sees. Whether he’s picking up sun-bleached shells on a beach, or staring out into the ocean for several days straight, or going into an old diner where they plaster the walls with dollar bills, he’s jazzed about the experience. He celebrates the life that happens all around him.

As I think back on my four years in Florida, it was a literary goldmine. All too frequently I dismissed my surroundings as mundane, as unworthwhile. And yet, it seems no matter where I live, the landscape is just as ordinary as it always is. Hall taught me to stop looking other places and instead look right where I am. To look into the ordinary and see something more. And with that something more, embrace it.

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The Podfading Roller Coaster

Tom Johnson — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:18:10 +0000

Podfading

Podfading is a term used to describe podcasters who start regular podcasting shows, but then fade away — either quickly or gradually. Podfading is a regular theme in the podcasting world.

For example, Benjamin Grundy of the Mysterious Universe podcast recently went into “deep space hibernation.” Brian Oberkirch used to podcast, but hasn’t published a new podcast for months. Even the host of the WordPress Podcast, Charles Stricklin, who has a large following and an abundance of material, at times finds it difficult to publish podcasts every week.

In Tricks of Podcasting Masters, Walch and Lafferty list five reasons for podfading:

Lack of time
Lack of interest
Lack of material
Lack of listeners
Lack of funds

Lack of time is the most common reason. Yet “time” is always relative. Here is how one podfader, Catlas of the now defunct Catlas Podhead Podcast, explains her lack of time:

I guess I just burned out. I took on too much too fast, and it became work instead of fun. I have recently taken up bicycle riding with a local cycle club, and we ride about 100 miles a week. I have also been triathlon training. I am a huge outdoor fan, and when summer rolls around I do not spend much time inside on the PC. I guess I never realized how much computer fun is a winter sport for me. (p.35)

She doesn’t have enough time to podcast because she’s biking 100 miles a week. Catlas really should have said, “I felt more value in biking than podcasting, and I changed how I spent my time.

After last year’s Doc Train West conference, I started to podfade. I burned out after publishing a dozen interviews from people I met at the conference. When I hit the Publish button on the last interview, I decided that I was done with podcasting. I didn’t interview anyone at the STC Summit, even though I had plans to. And then I didn’t podcast for the next three months.

I justified my podfading with a similar argument as Catlas, only instead of biking 100 miles a week (which would have been awesome), I decided to write more. As my blog title suggests, I’d rather be writing. I wanted to focus on my strengths. Do few things but do them well. And so it went.

At the very least, I decided to take a long break from podcasting. This is exactly what Tee Morris recommends to avoid podcasting burnout. In Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies, Tee suggests that, to avoid podfading, you should

Make a clean break and step away from [podcasting] completely. Stopping a passion cold-turkey can actually shock you back into a renewed love for what you talk about.

When you do something for nothing, it should be something you look forward to doing. …. If you don’t love what you do, the podcast becomes a chore – and there’s very little you can do to mask that ennui in your delivery when the mic goes live.

Step away from the mic and take a sabbatical. When you’re ready, make the return with a new-found fire and heavy fanfare. Not only will your loyal fans return, but you might even catch a few new listeners, too.” (393)

So I took a podcasting sabbatical without guilt. In the fall, feeling somewhat mixed about not podcasting, I recorded a few shows, but off and on, averaging about one or two a month. Not many complained about the absence, nor did they herald the return. The lack of response only propelled my apathy.

My driving routine changed, and I no longer had the regular feast of podcasts to energize me while commuting to work. Still, I managed to squeeze a podcast in every now and then. We have some buildings on our work campus that are about a mile apart from each other. When walking between the two, it’s a perfect time to listen to podcasts.

Last week, while walking between these buildings and listening to one of Alistair Christie’s podcasts, it hit me — my purpose with podcasting. Listening to Alistair and Graham, I felt personally connected to them more than any other blog I read. I realized that podcasting, more than almost any other communication medium, has a power to make you feel close to the podcaster, closer than you might feel to a novelist or blogger you’ve been reading. Realizing this, I knew that I couldn’t let go of podcasting. Audio has too much potential to dismiss.

Podcasting does take time. And in a world of competing interests, expanding opportunities, and growing commitments, I may one day say, No more. But for now I will try to move with the flow of my life and adapt.

I’ve avoided burnout long ago by relying on the interview format to generate content rather than creating all the content myself. Also, I recently altered my recording process to both increase the quality of the audio while simultaneously reducing the post-processing time. As long as I can maintain enthusiasm for the format — by constantly listening to podcasts, trying new techniques, having engaging conversations with people all over the world — I think I can keep the podfading reaper away.

Additional Resources

“Podfading Takes Its Toll” by Steve Freiss

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“Lost the Fire – How to Rekindle It” – A Second Response

Tom Johnson — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:09:28 +0000

Jayant writes,

I am a technical writer from India. I just moved to the UK and find the scenario very different from India. Here technical writing jobs are not easy to come by – I understand this is due to the recession. I also have found my desire for technical writing waning away a bit. This could be because at my previous office, technical writing had been reduced to merely doing language edits of 500 pages in three days.

How do I rekindle my technical writing fire? Your guidance will be tonic to my current state of mind.

Your question about how to rekindle your enthusiasm is relevant to any career, but perhaps especially with technical writing. Let me reply with a story. At a previous company, one of my colleagues told me she used to be more active in the field, like me, but that her interests changed.

Several times I tried to get her to attend the local STC meetings and events, but without any success. When work ended, she left her technical writer hat at the door. Actually, she’d stopped writing technical documents altogether and had become our designated editor, resigning herself to marking up others’ content only.

Rekindling the fire

Her comment to me one day, “I used to be like you,” made me wonder whether twenty years down the road I too would hold her same attitude, looking at new, enthusiastic writers with a certain apathetic smirk.

The question of how you stay passionate in your field is a universal concern. Even if you’re a best-selling novelist, you probably have days where you wake up and think, I’m so tired of writing. No doubt the president of the United States sometimes finds himself thinking, I wish I could do something else. Maybe fighter pilots also think, on occasion while ascending, Not again, this is getting dull; what else is there for me?

In my initial response to you, I offered him five activities you could do to rekindle your fire. I wrote,

Start a blog and publish at least three posts a week about technical communication.
Follow the conversation threads on TECWR-L (or some other active listserv you like).
Attend one or more technical writing conferences a year (e.g., the Summit in Atlanta).
Get involved in your local STC chapter.
Experiment a bit. Try new things, new deliverables, methods, techniques, etc.

My advice seemed a logical quick fix to career apathy. But you later responded,

I have started trying to post content. But have not found it easy to write on technical communication. I guess it will require constant effort.

I have been following TECHWR-L, though have rarely made any posts.

Your response made me think more about my advice. I thought about what my father once told me when I was in the fourth grade. When I was about 10, one day I came home and complained to my dad that what I was learning at school was boring. I can’t remember the subject details –- probably math or social sciences.

My father made a big deal about my comment. He said (and would say on other occasions), “It’s not the subject that’s boring, Tommy. It’s the teacher!” That idea has stuck with me all my life. It suggests that you can potentially be enthusiastically engaged in anything, if you look at it from the right angle. Even if you’re nothing more than a bus driver, perhaps you can become fascinated with traffic flows, weather conditions, routing patterns, social interactions in public spheres — whatever.

Still, the question is how exactly you do this. With some reflection, I’ve come to a conclusion. Reading is a trigger for thought, but in my experience, writing is the core activity that produces engagement. So I would now change my advice to you as follows: To rekindle your passion for what you do, write.

The advice is simple, but everything else hangs on it. Writing involves thinking, analyzing, experimenting, researching, reading. Writing is the one key activity that gives rise to everything else. It doesn’t matter whether you post on a blog, keep a private journal, or write articles for a magazine or journal –- writing itself is what keeps your mind active and engaged. It gives rise to enthusiasm.

But you find it hard to write about technical communication, you say? That’s because you’re not writing about what’s relevant to you. Find an issue or trend in the field that you struggle with, or that you’re curious about. Read about it, think about it, ask yourself questions about it, and write out the answers. Eventually your muse will begin to speak.

When you blog about it, others will respond. Comments will enrich your thoughts and require your response. All this will contribute to your level of engagement. Writing lends itself to new ideas and transforms your world views. It encourages experimentation and evaluation. The mere act of writing leads to a more active involvement with life in general. This is probably why you became a writer in the first place.

You may not feel the muse speak initially. That’s okay. Keep writing and reading until you find some momentum. When it does occur, everything else will follow. You’ll naturally get involved in local groups such as the STC. You’ll naturally begin to follow listservs that interest you. You’ll naturally be asking your employer for funding to attend conferences.

To jump start your writing engine, try doing the following five activities:

Listen to a podcast, and then write a post reviewing the main ideas you hear.
Read a few articles from STC’s Intercom magazine and write a post in response to something that intrigues you.
Read a tech comm blog and write a post in response to something that caches your eye.
Try something new with your deliverables and write about it.
Attend an STC event (chapter meeting, webinar, conference) and write about your experience.

Let me know how it goes.

“Could you please tell me what the job of a technical writer is like?”

Tom Johnson — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 05:24:30 +0000

I recently received an email from a reader who asked to know what the job of a technical writer is like. Anoop writes,

I am a computer science Master’s student at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. I am in my second year and I am on the lookout for jobs. Other than the system software engineer posts, I am considering applying for a job as a technical writer too. I do love witing as much or maybe more than I love coding and understanding operating systems. I do have experience in system software but not in technical writing, though I do blog occasionally and I also have written a few technical how-tos.

Could you please tell me what the job of a technical writer is like? How different is it from that of a software engineer? I know it pays less, but I guess you might get more satisfaction especially if you like writing? Could you, if you have the time, tell me how a day at work goes like? Do you think with my limited experience, I have a shot as a technical writer and in the area that I’m interested in?

I love getting questions like this. Of course technical writing isn’t creative writing, but it does require a lot of writing skills. If you can organize complex topics and communicate concepts clearly and concisely, conforming to a specific style, you probably have most of the writing skills you need.

As far as the salary and economic outlook, technical writing was listed as the 13th best job in America, according to Money Magazine. Technical writers earn an average salary of $57k per year. Software engineers, in contrast, appear at the top of the list and have an average salary of $80k. The job growth for engineers is projected at 46%, while that of technical writers is 23%.

In short, the economic outlook for the field of technical writing is good. As long as the tech industry is hot, the demand for technical writers will be there. Almost every software project needs a technical writer.

A lot of your job as a technical writer involves figuring out what the engineer is building. If you have an engineering background, you’re often a step ahead of other technical writers. If you can read programming code, your potential for higher income increases significantly.

The questions you asked can be answered in a lot of different ways, so I’ll give you a sample of my typical day. Below is more like a composite of different tasks all done within several weeks.

Tom’s Typical Day as a Technical Writer

Ride metro to work — listen to podcasts on technology topics. (Tech Writer Vocies and DMN Communications are great podcasts to listen to for technical communication.)
Attend morning scrum meeting, where each team member reports on what they did the day before. Try to figure out what has changed in the app., what new features or functionality have been added or are planned.
Return to desk and explore the application. With development environment access, the app is only partly-functional. Have to fill in the gaps of how it could work. Experiment, test, click here and there. Guess, test out hypotheses, isolate, observe, try, etc.
Visit software engineers to ask questions about application functionality. Inquire about workflow and other procedures.
Visit business analyst to ask about user characteristics and tasks. What tasks will users want to perform? Try to determine who users are, clarify the different roles and their familiarity with the concepts.
Return to desk and validate online help file by meticulously going over the steps to confirm the accuracy.
Create screencasts using Camtasia Studio that provide audiovisual tutorials for the most confusing tasks. Getting the timing right for the slides is painstaking, but the end product is appealing.
Create Visio diagrams representing workflows and other processes in the application. Submit to project manager for review.
Create one-page quick reference guides in Adobe Indesign for each user role. Meticulously confirm accuracy of the steps.
Discover new functionality in software app that wasn’t told to me. Have to return to the documentation and update it.
Attend meeting about project, listen to engineers and project managers and business analysts talk for a while. Ask when they’re going to code the help button. Realize that the project is going to be delayed several weeks.
Tackle bug with online help output. Display in IE needs a style adjustment. Tweak css for a while.
Access project sites to see if any technical documentation is relevant to my needs (and up-to-date). Skim through requirements. Find discrepancies between requirements and development environment. Ask project manager which is right.
Add more topics to online help based on new features and functionality discovered in the app.
Suggest to engineers that they change some of the on-screen text and make the buttons behave more predictably.
Print out documentation for the business analyst to review, and set up a meeting to encourage her to review it.
Write article on new features for release notes and corporate newsletter. Pitch idea of a product blog.
Return to metro for home — put on headphones and listen to podcasts.

That’s sort of a typical day/week/month/life of a technical writer.

You mentioned you’re in Vancouver. Vancouver happens to be a hub of tech writing. Last year I gave a presentation titled “20 Usability Tips for Blogging” at Doc Train West (held in downtown Vancouver). This year I’m going to be on a blogging panel with several noteworthy bloggers. If you can make it, (May 6-9), I highly recommend that you attend the Doc Train West 2008 conference.

Is technical writing satisfying? In a way, yes. I previously worked as a marketing copywriter. Sometimes I had a hard time feeling good about what I was writing, because I myself didn’t buy the products. I know technical writing helps people. Today I received an email from someone who mentioned they used the help and now they understand a difficult concept in the app. That felt good. With all the people out there who are confused by technology, who feel frustrated and try to find answers online or in help files, it feels satisfying to know I’m engaged in a good cause.

Through my examples above, I tried to show that technical writers do a lot more than writing. Very little time in the day is taken up by pure writing. There’s a lot of design, discovery, visuals and other tasks that writers do. My blog is actually what cures my itch to write.

You’ve probably wondered if technical writing is boring. I wrote a post on this a while back and received some great feedback. I think the key is to keep yourself engaged in the field. Writing a blog and creating podcasts make me enthusiastic about technical communication more than anything else.

Specifically, listening to podcasts can give you ideas, help you see how others have approached problems, and expand your knowledge in numerous ways. Unlike blog posts, you can often feel people’s excitement and energy through their voices.

If any readers have any advice or reflections for Anoop, please share them in the comments. You can also describe your typical day. I’d be interested to read that myself.

March 29 update: Definitely check out this Shanghai tech writer’s description of her typical day. A lot of parallels, despite being on the other side of the globe.