There's also the fear that putting words in public opens me to criticism, if someone can think of a better way of doing things, if my mental (or worse, technical!) model is wrong. Someone may take it too far and it leaks onto my personal life. In reality I see far worse practices than mine at work every day, so I hope if someone stumbles onto my blog that they get value out of whatever they read. It's also published with hugo on GitHub pages, absolutely no ads, and I'm not selling anything - for me, the blog really is about giving back.
Lastly, time. Today I knocked out a blog post on a light topic in about an hour. No revisions, just finished writing it and hit publish. I thought of the topic over the weekend and today was just put a few short examples and write about them. I'm not positive that I was detailed enough, or my explanations are good enough, etc. So time is another big factor, unless you're willing to risk publishing mistakes due to lack of polish
I think it's good to write down the things you've learned, even if no one reads it, text becomes a valuable exercise and then you will have it much easier to explain for someone what you mean. Not only will you be able to put your coworkers at the same level of understanding of the subject: your team becomes much faster at implementing consensus based decisions.
He or she is a good writer. Enjoy!
I always wrote trying to eliminate extra and meaningless words and phrases, so that my emails and documentation would not contain much hot air. But my work related to technical subjects and the world is complicated, so there is a limit to what terseness can convey. My typical estimate of my accomplishments trying to inform co-workers of my activities would be this:
I write 3 short paragraphs, say 10 sentences and 125 words to explain something that I have done or planned and send it to 10 people who ought to care. Two read only the subject line. Four scan it and three of those do so too quickly and don't get the message. Two read the first paragraph and stop there. Two read it, but only one gives it enough attention to get anything out of it. Why bother?
Even though I think I've gained some good experience in a few areas, it feels weird for me to write anything and position myself as an expert, even if I feel that my contributions and knowledge are valuable. I second guess myself and wonder all the stuff I might be missing, or things I don't know, all the things people could find wrong in my suggestions. So even when I feel like I know what I'm talking about, if I do write it down in a post it is often from the perspective of a learner sharing an experience about what they're learning, not an expert going "Here's how you should do this." or "Here's how this works."
And with things that I know I know a lot about, they just feel so trivial - "Everyone must know this, it's not interesting at all." So I often don't bother writing it.
- They don't have time, someone with that expertise is valuable
- Writing is hard especially when no one is reading it. That was the biggest barrier for me to get started writing. I have a natural tendency to write things mechanically, not fluidly. But on forums I write whatever I feel like
Related video that also explains why engineers dont vlog either, this was insightful to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Jh8fx8LuY
I've been working on a career pivot into web development. There are tons of people sharing / talking on the internet. Most of them are pretty bad at it IMO (I admit that would be too if I was doing that).
So much of it is "so we're going to do the thing" clicking "ok I wrote the code and there it is".
I think being a good teacher / sharer is a very specific skill that not a lot of people have.
I'll say that the internet is kinda unwelcoming plays a part. I did share some in my past career. Posted on reddit. I was bombarded by folks who really just don't know arguing with me / talking up a storm one too many times and gave up.
The problem is that beginners are often eager to blog about things they've learned and although they haven't fully grasped the concepts it's tempting to show what you are able to do. This leads to a lot of bad examples and incorrect code on such blogs, most often it stays uncorrected.
> I'll say that the internet is kinda unwelcoming plays a part. I did share some in my past career. Posted on reddit.
Reddit is unwelcoming with childishly stubborn users. I wish it wasn't the case, but I don't have any hopes that it will ever change.
That being said, the storm talking does get old very quickly. It's hard enough to write and edit! Usually if it's off-putting or argumentative, I don't worry about responding. For instance, from a recent comment on a blog post about a spray bottle:
"It works because it's a spray bottle. If it wasn't, it couldn't be called a spray bottle, and my assumption is someone would have changed the design until they got it working, and then that design would be called a spray bottle."
I always welcome conversation, but sometimes it's clear that a conversation isn't the goal!
- People don't think they can actually do it well enough to be significant for someone else (when they want to share knowledge)
- When they do, depending on how it's done, not getting the traction on something could take a hard toll on one's self esteem.
- It might have a negative effect on one's life, if you put something out there, it's there for everyone to criticize. You are exposing yourself, what you believe to be right and what you hold dearest to you in your beliefs.
- Time is always a constrain. We've got a finite amount of time that we can dedicate to something, juggling different priorities and trying to prioritize writing might be something hard when it's not how you make a living. If you do it for fun, you might always put first those things that have a more direct impact on your life.
- Feedback loops are hard to come by. Unless you have a close group of people that can give you a hand, you will never be done editing your own creations, and will probably have a very narrow view of what to change to make it better.
This is something I wanted to chime in, as I've gone through most of these. I just started writing some silly topics on my field (DevOps) and while doing this, I realized most of this points. In my experience, overall what I wrote was a 10 mins read on medium, however it took me a couple of hours to write it down, got two friends to do a review of it, and previous to that I re read it at least 5 times making modifications. It's time consuming, and I wasn't even doing it for the views, it was something I've wanted to do for a while, however for something that maybe 50 people saw, it was a huge time commitment.
You need to be able to edit or pay someone to do so. Blogs are easier, but most folks run out of steam after a short time unless they are also good at planning and think in the long-term. Novels and full-length books are similar: Most folks overestimate how long it will be and/or plan it out poorly.
And to top it all off, a lot of folks dislike writing, and need (monetary) persuasion to do such work. I'd personally rather make art (my hobby) than to write about it, for example.
I think too, you know people from work will see it and you also worry if it may affect the way they view you professionally.
It takes a lot of effort to make it pretty, convey the message and make sure the paragraph flow is there. It's a skill and I think you develop it with time. However, speaking for myself the return on investment just isn't there.
This is sadly the case for many, depending on the company culture writing should and can be encouraged.
It also doesn't help that the kind of writing that's usually taught or otherwise imparted at school or university for many use cases is needlessly complex and wordy but nevertheless often is considered the "only proper way of writing".
In many settings writing also doesn't provide an immediate noticeable benefit. Writing for example can help with:
- documentation and making decisions comprehensible and reproducible
- knowledge transfer
- improving the overall quality of a product
- marketing
- getting a better understanding of the problem yourself
With the exception of the last aspect these are all rather long-term benefits, which has to be taken into account when trying to find the motivation for writing.
Also, since design & art is a more 'freeform' type of activity. It is really hard to write it as a step by step for people to follow because sometimes the process is really, really messy (happy accident!)
Just thinking about how much I need to pour my power to write, I can't help but to give up haha. Maybe one day I'll find a way to do it...
Along the way I accumulated a great deal of expertise and experience. These days I get hired as a consultant and write reports on my findings, recommendations and often specifications for new systems (both hardware and software).
When you have knowledge and experience that people will pay for, then there is no incentive in giving it or my clients' expertise and knowledge for free.
1) It takes time to write and time is hard to manage. I have many priorities in life which I have to juggle and do not know how to manufacture time.
2) When I start writing, multiple competing and mutually exclusive descriptions of reality try to press themselves out of my head at once. My instinct is to try to resolve the confusion of ideas before getting the ideas out on paper, and that doesn't work.
3) When I start writing something and questions pop up as I am writing, I still hear an internal self-narrative "bullshit! just write the damned essay." This makes it hard for me to actually get those questions explicitly stated, determine which ones are important, and find the answers to them. It turns out that getting answers to questions like "Why should this be written?", "Whom are we writing this for?", or "How do I know I'm not making an error of judgement here?" are pretty important.
4) When I look at a blank text document or piece of paper, I sometimes feel a feeling of dread which makes me want to take a roofing nail and scrape it across my forearm until I draw blood. I've never done this, and I've been getting a lot better at managing the feeling.
5) When I try to get around the challenge of drafting by dictating my ideas into my phone, all of the dictation software I try ends up stopping after 2 minutes. This makes it really hard for me to just free-ramble 3 pages which I then edit later. If you know of an app which will let you ramble for 20 minutes into your phone and will poorly transcribe it into a text file, for you to edit please let me know. [EDIT: I just checked a thread where I had asked about this and someone recommended Otter. Will report back]
6) Because I'm not very experienced at successfully drafting things except when I used to write college papers up against the deadline, I am really not practised at editing my work to be more coherent. Therefore, it takes longer.
7) I am not very practiced at writing for an audience, actually taking into account how they would interpret what I'm saying, and then getting feedback as to how well I've done. Therefore this takes longer.
8) I would like to express concepts and relationships with diagrams, but I'm shite at drawing.
9) I don't knot that I have a group of people with whom I can check my drafts and who will spend the time/effort to give me feedback and help me organize my ideas better.
10) I can, in general, find it difficult to organise my thoughts. Beyond a certain length of ramble, writing requires structure so that you can look back on what you wrote and think of what needs to be said next. Coming up with that structure is hard and I have very little practice in it. That is why I wrote this response in BuzzFeed listicle style: to give myself a structure.
So yea, despite "publish three blog posts" being on my new years resolutions and me having done reasonably well at sticking to the others, I still haven't.
I have this problem a lot. Brand new thing, whatever it is, pristine state. You don't want to fuck it up. So you just, don't. Of course the paper is meant to be written on, and the file is meant to be written in. Write a single sentence. Just one. Your thesis. Your question. Anything. Now it's just on the page my itself, and possibly in the wrong spot. Crap, you've ruined the pristine blank space. Time to fill it up. Once I start writing though, I pretty much don't stop.
> 10) I can, in general, find it difficult to organise my thoughts. Beyond a certain length of ramble, writing requires structure so that you can look back on what you wrote and think of what needs to be said next. Coming up with that structure is hard and I have very little practice in it. That is why I wrote this response in BuzzFeed listicle style: to give myself a structure.
Then this is your structure. Maybe not the final one, but it's the initial one. Use it. I do this in a number of my posts here. Not the top-ten-list format but as a numbered list. And if this helps you to get started, make that first draft or maybe even the final draft, run with it.
> 7) I am not very practiced at writing for an audience, actually taking into account how they would interpret what I'm saying, and then getting feedback as to how well I've done. Therefore this takes longer.
> 9) I don't knot that I have a group of people with whom I can check my drafts and who will spend the time/effort to give me feedback and help me organize my ideas better.
You've got this community. Yes, they can sometimes be harsh, but it's here. And harsh can be good sometimes. A big lesson for me early in my career was to receive criticism while letting go of my ego. Whatever is said (even if what they say is a personal attack and not a proper critique) is about the thing, and not me. Take what they say and use it (or not, if you deem it to be wrong or inapplicable).
> 2) When I start writing, multiple competing and mutually exclusive descriptions of reality try to press themselves out of my head at once. My instinct is to try to resolve the confusion of ideas before getting the ideas out on paper, and that doesn't work.
Man, my notes are all over the place. I have 100 ideas in my head at once. But writing them down clears a lot of things up, especially after a few iterations of editing. I can start by talking about how to use git, and somehow end up talking about the theory of constraints. By writing it down I end up with content that can be reshaped into several (more coherent) discussions. A brain dump is actually a massively useful starting point. A nice freeform stream of consciousness style writing exercise. Go back once you're done and read it, highlight (or write onto other pages or documents) your theses and begin moving content around to properly express your ideas and the connections between them.
Like my mention above, there actually is a connection between theory of constraints and git in what I wrote. Specifically about reducing a constraint, that was adding time to the development process, by changing the way we coordinated code development activities and code integration (between branches) versus the old way (TFS or SVN with strict controls on branching, no local version control). I work in an office where they think they're doing ToC but really the management doesn't know shit and is checking boxes. I hate non-value added activities and sought to address my concerns with what we were doing to check those boxes by finding a value added change we could actually implement that would address a real constraint in how a number of our projects work. But the connection was non-obvious in the initial discussion and my initial writings because it was too rambling. By recreating my stream of consciousness spoken words on paper (or an org-file in that case) I was able to address the problem. (Ultimately I convinced one guy on one project, and he ran with it, his project is now one of the most productive in the office.)
Being a good writer takes practice and good communication skills.
Personally, I love to write a bit of documentation, especially around tasks I had to figure out because they are done rarely.
If this is in an office setting, sometimes co-workers won't document/share knowledge so it makes them feel like they can't be let go/replaced.
In this thread: people writing a blog post's worth of text on why they don't have enough time to write blog post's worth of text THAT comes up to their standard for publishing.