Managing time and success for technical writers

How is it that some people claim to have “all the time in the world”, while others on the contrary grumble that they never have time? This probably has to do with how people handle time. Used properly, it leads to success and satisfaction. The wrong approach to handling time jeopardises success and goals that have been set will not be achieved. In such situations, some people even fall ill. Proper time management can prevent this. We learn to manage our time effectively and thereby ensure success, both professionally as well as in our personal lives. All technical writers who want to improve the way they are managing their time should start by implementing four basic tenets.

Basic tenet 1: Planning the day

Make a plan for the day. For a concrete plan of the day, all you need is five to ten minutes and a calendar. It does not matter whether you create it on paper or in electronic form. What is important is that you should capture your thoughts in writing, so that nothing is forgotten.

Particularly useful: As your last task of your day at work, plan your tasks for the next day in advance. In this way, your sub-conscious can get accustomed to it and it will become easier to get started the next day.     

While adding tasks into the schedule planning, for instance, from a “to-do list” or any other target specification, you will have to estimate the time required for individual tasks. Going by experience, this is the most difficult part of the daily planning. Be generous while estimating, because one always needs more time than one thinks. Do not plan away the entire day, but leave a buffer for the unforeseen. The buffer time should be about 20 per cent of the time allotted for work.

Basic tenet 2: Priorities

Often, you will find that you have more tasks to deal with than time permits. What is to be done in these cases? Prioritize. Classify your tasks into stages A, B and C. Here, the so-called “Eisenhower principle”, which is shown in the following picture, is useful.

Tasks that are both important as well as urgent will be classified in the highest level A. This level is followed by levels B and C.     

Note: Importance comes before urgency! Anything that brings you closer to the goal is important. Urgent is apparently pretty much every task that is assigned to you. A task that you classify as neither important nor urgent belongs in the waste paper basket. And it takes a certain amount of courage to decide to do this.

And now go at the planned business for the day with gusto. But you will soon find to your utter dismay: everything seems to be going against you today and seems to be bent on forcing you off the planned track. Constant interruptions by colleagues, the telephone ringing incessantly, incoming e-mails…

Fig.: What is important, what is urgent? The Eisenhower principle helps in classifying tasks.

3rd Basic tenet: Famous interrupters and time thieves

You should identify such disruptive elements and time thieves and minimize them. Put an end to the myth of the open door and barricade yourself when you want to work on an A-task with concentration. Admitted that this is not quite so easy if one is working in one of these modern large office spaces. But even here, it is possible to redirect the telephone to the answering machine for a specified time.

Alternatively, arrange with a colleague so that he picks up your calls for this time. If you have the freedom to allocate your working time as you like, then you can find a quite, undisturbed stretch of time either early in the morning or later in the day, depending on your preference. Of course, social contact is needed. But be consistent and limit your conversations at the workplace in such a way that it fits in with your schedule.

You can save a lot of time if you avoid saying yes to everything and just take on additional tasks which have nothing to do with your own work, or do not take you anywhere nearer to your goals, out of sheer good nature. Practice saying No without causing frustration to yourself or to your counterpart.

If you cannot define exactly what is keeping you from accomplishing your work during the course of the day, try maintaining a disruptions sheet for the day. For one week, note down what is keeping you from finishing your work. All you need is a sheet of paper on your worktable, on which you will note down briefly the disruptions that arise constantly. After a week, it will be clear to you what hidden elements are responsible for stealing your time and you will have an idea of what you could do to counter these.

One modern culprit of the first order that drains your time is the flood of e-mails. Many companies have already recognized this and have declared specific intervals internally during which the employees are not allowed to receive any e-mails. Your company may also be prepared to provide for a suitable relief period.

And finally an appeal to your self-discipline: concentrate on the essentials in your tasks; do not allow minor issues to distract you. Stay consistent with your task and do not dissipate your energies. If you are torn away from your thought processes frequently, you will lose time each time in trying to get back on track. The ability to multitask does sound very modern, but does not bring anything in the end. Many tasks that are started but not completed create stress, which can make you sick. Success can be achieved only by pursuing goals in with perseverance.

4th Basic tenet: Goal and success

If you never lose sight of your goal, you will remain on the right course. To be successful in an enduring manner, inculcate these factors:

• Know precisely what you want
• Take clear decisions
• Exude a healthy confidence in yourself
• Use your energies in a manner that is consistent with your goals
• Ensure clear-cut roles in all relationships
• Learn to motivate yourself and others wel

Over and above this, never forget: you cannot go far without social skills.

Saving time in technical writing

From the point of view of technical writing, interfaces are the communication paths along which information can be exchanged in an interdisciplinary manner between the various work groups or departments, such as between the departments for development and technical writing. Unfortunately, many technical writers often experience how difficult and tough it is sometimes to procure information in this area. The writer often gets stuck in the middle of his research because important details are missing.

Now begins a course of events that is frustrating in most cases. He starts by calling the development department. The concerned colleague is not there at the moment, the one who is there does not know what is happening. The call is repeated later, or not. You may experience the same by e-mail. Quite independent of the channel of communication: the writer cannot proceed, loses a lot of his valuable time while the submission deadline draws closer.

This daily madness can be avoided only if an interface is defined clearly and in advance. The flow of information should be defined in terms of time and content and included in the phase plan of the development project.

To make such agreements binding on all participants in the process, I feel it is necessary to describe the interfaces at a suitably higher level of hierarchy.

Define internal interfaces

But sometimes there is need for clear consensus and discussions within the technical writing department itself. As an example, we may cite the cooperation between the technical writers and translators. If it is known in advance that a technical document is going to be translated into other languages, then the technical writer should, for instance, bear in mind that the foreign language text may need more space in the layout. This also holds good for graphics with textual portions and captions of illustrations. Quite often, it is found that the entire layout has gone haywire after translation.     

Apart from the examples mentioned here, there are bound to be other smaller or bigger “construction sites” in your environment. Whenever you notice that the absence of consensus and definitions is creating disruptions and misunderstandings, you will need to act and tackle the problem in a focused manner.

Using checklists

A large-scale interface regulation is not always necessary for everything, sometimes, even a simple checklist will do. Checklists can be created for the most varied of situations. They are very useful if recurring tasks need to be dealt with, and in saving time.

There is no need to think through routine processes afresh each time. Besides this, with checklists you can be sure that you have not forgotten anything important. Checklists have found to be especially useful in preparing for discussions and events.

Establishing a set of guidelines

The authoring guideline is, more precisely, a manual for creating manuals. It contains all the necessary details for uniform and consistent authoring and designing in technical writing. In my experience: as soon as a technical writing department has two or more writers of the same ranking, there is bound to be a difference of opinion on how technical documentation is to be created.

Disparity of the documents makes it all the more difficult to handle the downstream processing, especially where the layout and translation are concerned, as explained already under the section “Defining internal interfaces”. Besides queries and rework, which of course take up time, they do not support conformity with a uniform image, that is, the commitment to the Corporate Design.

Unpleasant experiences in this respect and the need for introducing rationalizing measures have convinced me that it is necessary to invest some hours of work in creating a set of authoring guidelines. In retrospect, this investment pays off more than once: the number of unnecessary design discussions is reduced, and even the interface to the translators is largely clarified. Another positive side effect is that a considerable amount of time can be saved while inducting new staff.

Designing the guidelines

Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast rule or generally valid recipe for implementing an authoring guideline, which can be downloaded from the internet or accessed in the technical literature. Rather, the guidelines must be tailored to suit the requirements and concerns of the individual authoring department. Here it is important to include all persons who are involved in the process of creation, so as to gain acceptance for the usage across the board.

An authoring guideline should contain the following contents essentially:

• Definition of the names of documents, such as User Manual, Technical Handbook, Spare Parts Catalogue
• Structure of a document and sample pages
• Language and text design
• Typography and page layout
• Designing of warning instructions
• Including graphics and photographs
• Other special features

In the end, the authoring guideline can become a very effective instrument for saving time, for, in technical writing, too, there is no need to reinvent the wheel constantly.

Maintaining and updating a terminology

Dealing with terminology in itself opens up a wider scope for reducing the effort involved. Originally, the use of uniform terminology throughout the technical documentation was more an aspect related to better comprehensibility and therefore, quality and legal security of the products. In the wake of globalization and the need for an increasing number of language versions, the costs incurred by manufacturers are increasing phenomenally. The need for automation and rationalization of translation processes is getting louder by the day, so that time and money can be saved.

The software market now offers various applications, the foremost among them being translation memory systems. These systems are very useful because they are capable of saving texts that have been translated already, and providing the target text automatically in the corresponding language if these text passages appear again. However, this works only if the text that is entered is absolutely identical with the saved text. Even a simple difference in the way things are written, for instance, a composite word with or without a hyphen, will pause the program and necessitate a manual correction. Not to speak of the frequent, unthinking use of different names for one and the same technical object.

The problem of different names or nomenclatures should be tackled at the roots. Rectifying such terminology errors only at the end of the process chain, that is, during the technical writing phase means that the effort involved will be correspondingly higher.  

It is always better to make an early start: the person in charge of technical documentation must be in touch with the development department so that products are given uniform names right at the beginning. Another useful approach is to have one employee who is in charge of terminology alone. Such demands are sure to make the HR managers frown, but the costs of a qualified terminologist will surely pay off.

Summary

I hope this article has given you enough ideas for taking a critical look at the way you handle your time. Before you get started on the big tasks in technical writing, as explained in the second part of the article, you should first deal with the four basic tenets. The best thing to do would be to get started with it right away. Of the many ideas presented here, look for those that apply to your situation and your environment. And remember: managing your time means managing yourself, and therefore, managing your life

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