Option Paralysis and the Technical Writer

Option Paralysis: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none. – Douglas Coupland

The saying goes, you can’t get what you want if you don’t know what you want. That is a problem that I’ve been struggling with for quite some time. I have spent the past several years settling for what I can stand, rather than what I truly enjoy. In a way, I have been challenging to see just how much I can put up with and still function. I would commute for two hours a day to work for eight hours a day and then come home and write / work on my blog for another three to four hours a day.  Last winter, after two years of keeping up this grueling schedule, I gave up on my blogging. This is unfortunate because writing this blog was by far the most enjoyable of the tasks that were in front of me.

I have been a technical writer for fifteen years. On my best days, I am great at this job. When the challenge is right and my interest is peaked, I can work magic. Unfortunately, the opportunity to work magic comes up only on occasion. Last summer and fall was one of those times. I was working with a talented and energetic partner, and we did some great work. For a period of over three months, I actually looked forward to getting up in the morning and doing what I was good at. Eventually though, the situation changed and I went back to forcing myself to go to work every day. In June though, I got lucky. I lost my job.

I had lost a lucrative job and all of the security that comes with it. The job market was terrible so my prospects seemed weak. I had mortgage payments, car payments, student loan payments, utilities and a grocery bill to worry about. On occasion, I was scared out of my skull. Most of the time, however, I was happy. I had lost a job, but I had gained ten to eleven hours of my day. My stress level dropped. I stopped having to drink Coffee and Monster energy drinks just to get through the day.

I even managed to keep making money. That was the strangest part of all. The Internet took a shine to me. I found that magic money making formula that Tim Ferris and all of those ads on Facebook claim to have. I figured it out myself though, and unlike them I’m not telling anyone what it is. My site has never been about getting rich on the Internet and it never will be. Sorry.

The upshot of all this is that I have freedom for the first time in a long time. I can do what I want to do. I can write what I want to write. I can pick any direction I please. This has brought on a case of option paralysis. Do I return to blogging? Do I look for that “perfect” technical writing job? Do I pick a new career path?

I am free. Now what?

As I pulled up in front of my house, I noticed that my van was on fire

As I pulled up in front of my house, I noticed that my van was on fire. More specifically, the driver’s side rear tire, which had slowly been coming apart for the past few miles, was now producing acrid black smoke and I could hear the soft crackle of flames. The temperature outside was 108 degrees. There was no telling how hot the asphalt was, but frying eggs was certainly a possibility. Still, flaming tires seemed a bit excessive. Hadn’t Mythbusters just proved that this couldn’t happen?

I’ll be honest. I’ve had better summers. The season started with me getting fired. The offense was that I allowed a relatively minor company document to get indexed by Google. I had used one of my own ftp sites to send the file home, and I had forgotten to remove the document. Google found it, information security found it on Google, and I found myself out of a job. In years past, such an infraction would have gotten me a warning at best, but times have changed. My termination was soon followed by a substantial round of layoffs at the company. Virtually every benefit, from medical to profit sharing to the 401k has either been eliminated or substantially reduced. I fully expect that there will be more layoffs. The company has some major problems and it may or may not survive

I went into the house to fill up a pail of water. Unfortunately I didn’t have a pail, so I used a two-liter soda bottle. The water pressure was particularly bad the day. In the summer, in the desert, the water pressure at two in the afternoon is light at best. Before I even finished filling the bottle, the tire exploded. I ran out and splashed water on the fire, but it was too late for minor measures. My neighbor had his hose in the front yard, so I ran and grabbed it. The water was barely strong enough to reach the fire, which was making its way toward the gas tank. I focused the water on that spot.

Getting fired had not been in my plans. In fact, I had been making a special effort at to work to eliminate any possible issues. In a casual work environment, I had begun wearing long sleeves and ties. I had eliminated every remotely cynical decoration and covered my cubical with inspirational slogans and the company’s “customer covenant”. I had tried to make myself fireproof, but there’s always something out there that can get you. For me it had been a nightmare project four months earlier. We’d been given an outrageous deadline to put out a product that was clearly not ready. We’d been told to “think outside the box” and do what it takes to succeed. I was operating on almost no sleep and battling a cold that had dragged on for months. Somewhere in all that chaos, I started sending files back and forth from home so I could keep working. This was not an approved activity, and even though I had my manager’s consent, I knew it was a risk. That was why I stopped after the company came to the sad realization that its dream product was a polished turd and gave up. Unfortunately, I forgot about the file, even as Google was discovering it. Four months later, it exploded in my face.

An explosion was exactly what I was trying to avoid with the van. Unfortunately, as even I know, water is not the most effective way to put out a fire, especially when oil and gasoline are involved. In this case, however, I got lucky. Two neighbors appeared, each with their own fire extinguisher. They didn’t quite manage to put the fire out with them, but they got it away from the gas tank and eventually we managed to put the rest of the fire out with the hose. By the time the fire truck arrived, we were already cleaning up the mess and pondering the damage. We drank some ice water together and then I went to call my insurance company. Eventually I collapsed on the couch and spent the rest of the night coughing up the remains of smoke and fire-retardant powder.

When you get fired, you have to combat a lot of issues at once. You are depressed that you failed. You are angry that you were rejected. You are worried about your finances and your reputation. You have to contend with everyone, EVERYONE, that you know asking you what you are going to do next. You question your actions and try to figure out what you could have or should have done differently. I updated my resume on all the job boards. I bought a new set of business cards. I contacted old friends. I created a new portfolio site.  I found ways to dramatically increase my Internet income. My wife and I cut out all of our unnecessary expenses.

The van had caught fire as I was arriving home from an interview. My portfolio, my friends, even my business card had come together to bring me a new opportunity. A few days later I got the call. We want you. I am an independent again. I am a freelancer for hire, and I have my first contract. Life is good… but I need a new car.

I See Dead Projects

One of the great things about blogging is that, for the most part, there is little lead time. You write something and then you publish it. If you’re lucky, you get feedback and if it is particularly good you get repeat visitors. You might write ahead, gathering several days or even weeks worth of posts in advance, but for the most part you are writing as you go.

In the world of technical writing, you are often assigned to projects that last for months or even years, and in many cases the material you write today may not be read for a long time. Occasionally, it won’t get read at all, at least not by the people you intended it for. This has been a fairly regular occurrence in my career. My first major project lasted a year. At the end of that year, the company was part of a merger and moved to the other company’s software platform, negating all of my work.

Later on in my career, I documented what was expected to be a major product for a very large hardware/software company.  Because of the lead time for localization, I had to complete the documentation two months before the product was to be released. I had just finished up and sent off my work to the translators when word came down that the project was being scrapped due to a poor business case. Poor business case was code for, “our competitors decided to include this tool for free in their new operating system”.

My most recent bout of deadprojectitis hasn’t been quite as severe. The product I have been working on for the past two years was released and most of my documentation is at least available to customers. Nonetheless, the product is on its way out. It won’t be gone today or tomorrow, but it is being replaced by something newer and shinier and almost certainly better. The change came suddenly. Just a month ago, it looked like the product would be getting a major overhaul that would have me up to my armpits in documentation for the next six months, but things change.

In all of these cases, far more than my own efforts were negated. There were programmers, engineers, project managers, product managers, business analysts and a host of other people who had their efforts negated. These things happen. Companies change direction, market forces change people’s needs, competitors beat you. This is the world of business and it is frustrating. In some cases people don’t just see their hard work pushed aside, they actually lose their jobs. There isn’t always another project waiting around the corner. These are the realities of the business world. In the current economy, it is something you’ll see more and more of. Companies will be cutting expenses, and often that comes in the area of new development, or the elimination of existing products.

There is no magic solution to this problem. It helps if you can be assigned to more than one project, so that you aren’t defined by a single product, but those choices aren’t always your to make. This is the business world. When things do wrong you pick yourself back up, dust yourself off and get back in the game.

How to Fake Enthusiasm for Corporate Platitudes

The corporate world loves enthusiasm. They want it at every level, from the rank and file all the way up the ladder. Enthusiasm can make up for a multitude of sins, especially incompetence and arrogance. If you are incompetent and arrogant, but unenthusiastic, you are doomed at a corporation. If you add enthusiasm though, you just might make it to the top.

The problem with enthusiasm is that, unless it just comes naturally to you, it will be hard to maintain in a corporate environment. Sitting in a cubicle all day is torturous on a number of levels. You cannot control the look (blue/gray accented by fluorescent white) or the noise (every conversation you never wanted to hear). You will be asked to “get on board” a number of flawed initiatives that will seem doomed to failure to you. At times you will be given a list of values/covenants that you are expected to believe in wholeheartedly and speak about enthusiastically. These run along the lines of:

• We will make our customers love us.
• We will obliterate our competitors.
• We will always succeed. Failure is not an option.
• We will fix every issue the day that it occurs.
• We will give 100% effort at all times.

Some of these will seem possible, and others will seem silly, and a few won’t make any sense at all no matter how many times you read them. In most cases, there will be about twenty of them, and some will seem to completely contradict others. You will be tempted to point this out. Don’t bother. Nobody wants to hear that the values are silly, contradictory or impossible. The important thing is that you will need to embrace all of these things enthusiastically, no matter how much you want to run from the room screaming.

Here are the rules for faking enthusiasm:

First, do no harm

Your natural instinct when confronted with something you believe to be massively, painfully stupid is to say so. That is the instinct you must crush inside of you. When confronted with such a situation, talk yourself out of being critical. Critical thinking will only get you in trouble. Ask yourself, “How would someone who can’t see how stupid this is respond?”

Put the corporate values up on the wall of your cube

Nothing says “I Believe!” like having the values up on your wall. Try to find a place where everyone can see them but you. Actually looking at them every day could prove to be too painful to bear.

Learn to speak their language

When a corporation asks for enthusiasm, they are generally willing to accept any sign of it that they see. Remember that the same people who will be judging your enthusiasm are the ones who made up the empty platitudes that they expect you to get enthusiastic about. These are not deep thinkers. Pick a few phrases that you think you can deliver without wincing (a sure sign of a lack of enthusiasm) and have them ready to deliver. You don’t want to have to think about this. Stopping to think is also a sign of a lack of enthusiasm. Here are some good stock phrases:

• That’s Fantastic!
• This is what I’ve been waiting for!
• Sounds good to me!
• I’ll put these on my wall!
• Words to live by!

Work on your tone of voice

One of the biggest challenges of faking enthusiasm is to keep your voice from betraying you. If you undersell it you will seem sarcastic and if you oversell  it you will seem either sarcastic or just plain insane. You want just a hint of enthusiasm in your voice. A truly enthusiastic person can deliver more, but you want to stay on the safe side. Sell it, but just a little. You should probably practice in front of a mirror. Until you get it right, stick to being enthusiastic via email.

Come up with some tips

Sometimes you can get away with just saying a stock phrase, but at other times you will be asked to “implement” the platitude. That means you will have to come up with something you can do to carry out the platitude. Look for very small ways in which these things can be implemented, preferably by doing things that you already do or that cannot be verified. Be prepared for your ideas to be shot down. If they are, nod. Nodding is a great way to make no comment while appearing enthusiastic and agreeable.

Platitude: We will make our customers love us.
Response: We should spend more time listening to our customers!

Platitude: We will obliterate our competitors
Response: We should start a United Way campaign!

Platitude: We will always succeed. Failure is not a possibility
Response: We should form collaborative teams!

Platitude: We will fix every issue the day that it occurs
Response: We should make sure to act on every item in our inbox every day!

Platitude: We will give 100% effort at all times
Response: We should all make a to do list!

Move on

Most of these values statements just get ignored after a while. The important thing is to show enthusiasm every time they come up, then go back to doing your job once the furor dies down. Be prepared though. Another list will be in its way soon enough.

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