(11/11/11 @ 1:11 pm, Plano, TX)
I'm sitting here at the office and I'm not in the mood to work. I've checked my various Internet distractions, email, news, paid a few bills and now there is nothing left to do but get some work done. I'm depressed. I'm unmotivated. I don't feel like working today. It's Friday. Nobody is here. Nobody pays much attention to what I'm doing as currently I'm the only tech writer on a big IT team. I need to prime my motivation pump. So what do I do when I don't feel like writing? How about write my blog?
Last night I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about the nature of my work. No matter what I do, I eventually fail. No matter how hard I work, the job ends. Sure, I've quit a few before they ended, but who am I kidding? These jobs too would have ended. There is very little life control afforded in technical writing.
So there I was in bed. It's 2 am. I have to be up at 6:30. And what am I doing? I'm thinking about technical writing. If all tech writing jobs end despite my best efforts, how do I stay motivated? Am I crazy? I have raised two families on the income from my work, so that's good right? Doesn't seem like enough somehow. Seems futile. Why does it have to be this way?
How does one measure success? Money? Satisfaction? Happiness?
I don't know.
Remember when businesses discovered quality in the 80s and 90s? Smart companies thought, "we'll get us some of that quality and then we'll be successful."
One of the most prestigious quality awards was the Baldrige. Big corporations simply hired consultants and bought their Baldrige awards as publicity gimmicks. But smaller companies drank the Kool-Aid. They embraced the religion of quality and then promptly failed at the next economic speed bump.
How could that be? Is quality not synonymous with sustained success? Maybe not.
Let's talk about failure in tech writing. A company develops a product. Lets use the example of Texas Instruments and their calculator. That product needs documentation. They hire a tech writer. The product is successful. The tech writer is successful. The company reinvests the profits and develops more calculators. They hire more tech writers. More success. Things are going great.
For more than thirty years, things went great. Then one day TI is looking to save money. Look at the size of this tech writing department!!!! Let's outsource it they say. But they do it in a special way. They give the on site writers the option of going to work as contractors. Many of these folks have been doing this work as direct employees for more than twenty years. TI rewards them for their efforts by paying them less, taking away their stock options and benefits. Most of the good writers leave immediately. The new management is clueless. The rest of the experienced folks flee. What the heck happened? Is this how success is rewarded?
Yes. If success costs money, then in America you succeed yourself out of a job. This is part of the reason I fail. I'm good. I'm expensive. I fail.
The other problem is the tractor pull analogy. The more technical writing you do, the bigger the library of words that must be maintained. The sled gets too heavy and finally can no longer be moved. You fail.
Then there's the information explosion created by the Internet and a world where everyone is an author. More and more words to deal with everyday. The saying, "who has time to write" has been replaced with "who has time to read." Net result, you, the tech writer fail again.
So basking in the black light of all this failure at 2 am staring at my dark ceiling, I start thinking "what's the point? Is there any reason to go on?"
What a pointless career this is! Is there another profession that has to endure such frustrating hopelessness?
And then it hit me. Doctors! We respect them. Maybe not Michael Jackson's doctor, and in general, maybe we don't respect them quite as much as we used to, but overall, we still consider them noble and important. But look at it this way. No matter how good they are, eventually the patient dies!
Now I've done a lot of things both good and bad as a tech writer, but as far as I know. Nobody who has ever used one of my documents has ever died! Sure, something I wrote once in a missile manual did result in the emergency evacuation of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, but I'm pretty sure that nobody died!
Then why do we love doctors so much if they can't keep their patients alive? Because doctors can ease our suffering.
And that my friends is when I realized my purpose in this life. It is to ease the suffering of the reader. To make the pain of their lives a little less acute.
It's not about job security. There is no such thing. It's about easing the suffering of the reader. Make it understandable. Make it correct. Make it brief. Make it enlightening. Make the world a better place one page at a time. And for God's sake, don't kill anybody while you're at it. At that realization, I finally rolled over and fell into a sweet sleep.
Funny, I feel like getting back to work now.
Art Fischman
I'm sitting here at the office and I'm not in the mood to work. I've checked my various Internet distractions, email, news, paid a few bills and now there is nothing left to do but get some work done. I'm depressed. I'm unmotivated. I don't feel like working today. It's Friday. Nobody is here. Nobody pays much attention to what I'm doing as currently I'm the only tech writer on a big IT team. I need to prime my motivation pump. So what do I do when I don't feel like writing? How about write my blog?
Last night I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about the nature of my work. No matter what I do, I eventually fail. No matter how hard I work, the job ends. Sure, I've quit a few before they ended, but who am I kidding? These jobs too would have ended. There is very little life control afforded in technical writing.
So there I was in bed. It's 2 am. I have to be up at 6:30. And what am I doing? I'm thinking about technical writing. If all tech writing jobs end despite my best efforts, how do I stay motivated? Am I crazy? I have raised two families on the income from my work, so that's good right? Doesn't seem like enough somehow. Seems futile. Why does it have to be this way?
How does one measure success? Money? Satisfaction? Happiness?
I don't know.
Remember when businesses discovered quality in the 80s and 90s? Smart companies thought, "we'll get us some of that quality and then we'll be successful."
One of the most prestigious quality awards was the Baldrige. Big corporations simply hired consultants and bought their Baldrige awards as publicity gimmicks. But smaller companies drank the Kool-Aid. They embraced the religion of quality and then promptly failed at the next economic speed bump.
How could that be? Is quality not synonymous with sustained success? Maybe not.
Let's talk about failure in tech writing. A company develops a product. Lets use the example of Texas Instruments and their calculator. That product needs documentation. They hire a tech writer. The product is successful. The tech writer is successful. The company reinvests the profits and develops more calculators. They hire more tech writers. More success. Things are going great.
For more than thirty years, things went great. Then one day TI is looking to save money. Look at the size of this tech writing department!!!! Let's outsource it they say. But they do it in a special way. They give the on site writers the option of going to work as contractors. Many of these folks have been doing this work as direct employees for more than twenty years. TI rewards them for their efforts by paying them less, taking away their stock options and benefits. Most of the good writers leave immediately. The new management is clueless. The rest of the experienced folks flee. What the heck happened? Is this how success is rewarded?
Yes. If success costs money, then in America you succeed yourself out of a job. This is part of the reason I fail. I'm good. I'm expensive. I fail.
The other problem is the tractor pull analogy. The more technical writing you do, the bigger the library of words that must be maintained. The sled gets too heavy and finally can no longer be moved. You fail.
Then there's the information explosion created by the Internet and a world where everyone is an author. More and more words to deal with everyday. The saying, "who has time to write" has been replaced with "who has time to read." Net result, you, the tech writer fail again.
So basking in the black light of all this failure at 2 am staring at my dark ceiling, I start thinking "what's the point? Is there any reason to go on?"
What a pointless career this is! Is there another profession that has to endure such frustrating hopelessness?
And then it hit me. Doctors! We respect them. Maybe not Michael Jackson's doctor, and in general, maybe we don't respect them quite as much as we used to, but overall, we still consider them noble and important. But look at it this way. No matter how good they are, eventually the patient dies!
Now I've done a lot of things both good and bad as a tech writer, but as far as I know. Nobody who has ever used one of my documents has ever died! Sure, something I wrote once in a missile manual did result in the emergency evacuation of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, but I'm pretty sure that nobody died!
Then why do we love doctors so much if they can't keep their patients alive? Because doctors can ease our suffering.
And that my friends is when I realized my purpose in this life. It is to ease the suffering of the reader. To make the pain of their lives a little less acute.
It's not about job security. There is no such thing. It's about easing the suffering of the reader. Make it understandable. Make it correct. Make it brief. Make it enlightening. Make the world a better place one page at a time. And for God's sake, don't kill anybody while you're at it. At that realization, I finally rolled over and fell into a sweet sleep.
Funny, I feel like getting back to work now.
Art Fischman
