Ask HN: How to write documents quicker?
I'm a somewhat experience software engineer (5 years in big tech) and as such I often have to write stuff.
Note that I'll talk about writing to simplify, but technical docs are a mix of writing and doing diagrams, for which I have the same problem.
I know that I write well (don't use this post's title as an example), everyone is always happy with my docs, praising them or even using them as bar-setting for the team so there's no problem with that aspect.
However, I write extremely slowly. About 30 words per hour, most of the time. Writing is a literal mental torture for me, not because I don't like it (I do), but because I make no progress.
To more clearly explain my writing "process", I will usually struggle to start, until I get a small burst of [inspiration / motivation / productivity / ???] (I don't really know what) and I will be able to write a few lines, before my next productivity collapse. And then the cycle repeats all day long, where I will have bigger or smaller bursts (30 seconds to 5 minutes) where I make progress, followed by sometimes hours of inability to focus.
I basically get distracted all the time, by anything. Often I know what to write, but the words just refuse to come out.
The second thing that impairs my speed is that I want to write and format everything well right away. It's not that I can't draft small sections in bullet points, but if I'm writing the actual doc, it has to be perfect, otherwise I will be distracted by the extra space or the title that is formatted differently from the others.
Things I have tried:
- Putting distractions out of my reach: it doesn't help, my mind will just go wandering,
- Going to the office: it's even worse,
- Working with someone else next to me: no difference.
I am looking for suggestions of people that struggled similarly and were able to improve. For example, I remember a website that allowed you to type but not to go back more than 2 lines above to edit, which may help with drafting.
Thanks, and sorry for the wall of text.
PS: I imagine that on this kind of topics people will mention ADHD. I haven't been assessed but I don't think I have it. I was never great at focusing before, but I don't remember it being such an issue in my childhood. Also it seems like it's getting worse progressively (I'm 28).
PPS: As an example, it took me pretty much exactly an hour to write this post.