Latest / The Not-Boring Tech Writer / Self-documentation for career growth with Kate Pond

Transcript

Self-documentation for career growth with Kate Pond · The Not-Boring Tech Writer

• Kate Mueller: [00:00:04] Welcome to The Not-Boring Tech Writer, a podcast sponsored by KnowledgeOwl. Together, we explore topics and hear from other writers to help inspire us, deepen our skills, and foster our distinctly not-boring tech writing community. Kate Mueller: [00:00:21] Hello my lovely fellow not-boring tech writers. Today I am so excited to welcome to the podcast someone who does not have a job role including the words “tech writer” in it. This woman, like me, has a checkered past before she got into the role she's in now. So she's been a park ranger and is now a software engineer. So pretty big career narrative arc there, and our paths crossed sort of secondarily by accident at Write the Docs Portland [2025] this past year. I am so excited to welcome to the pod, Kate Pond. Kate, welcome. Kate Pond: [00:00:57] Thank you for such a nice warm welcome. Yeah. I can barely imagine why I was at Write the Docs, to be honest with you. No, I was there because I had some extra PD personal development funds, and Portland's not too far from Seattle, so I was like, oh, this seems like a cool thing to go to. I like docs. Docs are fun, right? And the company that I was working for at the time, they kind of had a mess in Notion. And so it was like, oh, well, maybe I can go and get some tips on how to fix that, or at least get it to a better place. So yeah, but it's very cool that we got to run into each other at Write the Docs. Kate Mueller: [00:01:35] Yeah. I would say you are in good company. A lot of the folks who listen to this podcast love docs. And I would say a good chunk of us aren't quite sure how we ended up here either, so it works out okay. But I'm guessing you were coming at it more from the software engineering side and you have to work with docs in work, and it was a little bit frustrating that they just had a giant Notion mess? Kate Pond: [00:02:04] I think it was like not only from the software engineering point of view, but also from the leadership management “I want to help people” point of view. I want to help the people around me. And if they have better docs, then they can be helped, maybe better by me or better for themselves. I think that's where I was coming from. Kate Mueller: [00:02:27] Yeah, I did a couple, I want to say solo episodes ago, I did an episode on how docs are an act of giving good service to other people, and I think it's that kind of thing—you want other people to have a better experience. And if you can improve documentation, that means people can find the answers they want faster, they can get back to the stuff they're actually interested in working on faster. So I would say we're pretty aligned there. Also, we have the same first name. So lots of alignment just out of the gate. Kate Pond: [00:02:58] That's right, absolutely. Kate Mueller: [00:02:59] So this is somewhat an interesting interview because I normally ask very tech writer heavy things, but since I know you have written some documentation, I think this one still works: what is your tech writer villain origin story? How did you get into writing any type of technical documentation? Was it park ranger era? Was it software engineer era? Was it in hindsight, a little bit of both of those things? Kate Pond: [00:03:28] Yeah, I really liked how this question was framed. What's your villain story? Because honestly, and you probably get this a lot on your podcast actually, and I need to go back and listen to some episodes, but I really think of tech writers as heroes. So what's the hero's story? Kate Mueller: [00:03:45] [Laughter] Well, I just think I ask it this way because I feel like it invites, let me trace this back to some weird event that happened in my childhood, because it feels like villain origin stories are always some esoteric, weird thing that happened in formative years that now becomes really important and integral. And I've had folks be like, “I just ended up doing documentation in my work,” but I've had some folks be like, “As a kid, I was really into LEGO. And if you think about it, LEGO documentation is a form of technical writing.” And I'm like, “Wow, yeah, I guess it is. I never thought about it that way!” So I ask it this way because I think it invites a level of reflection on it that is a little bit different than if it was either your hero's story or just like, “How did you get into this field?” Kate Pond: [00:04:33] Yeah, I get it for sure. Absolutely. So I thought about it. When I was really little, I was like super into rocks, and my mom tried to find a junior ranger program. She tried to find a geologist program for me, and couldn't find one for kids that were like six years old. So she found a park ranger who was starting a junior ranger program. And I was the first junior ranger of Orange County, California. Pretty incredible. I mean, that kind of set me on my route to be a park ranger. It was like blinders. I was like, “This is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.” And it was all about telling people about nature and telling people about the natural history at parks. And I think I spent a lot of time in middle school and high school journaling, but I didn't really think of journaling as technical writing. And I didn't really do technical writing until I got into college. And when I realized that if I had “runbooks” for the stuff that I did, then I wouldn't have to remember it. I could just be like, “Oh, now I have to talk to this person. What are all the steps I need to do to talk to this person?” And I could just go through my own personal runbook. So this was like when I was a residence assistant, an RA at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It was a lot of those tasks. I need to organize some meetup for my residents so we can talk about the potluck that they want to host. Well, I've got a runbook on how to organize meetups. Great! Kate Mueller: [00:06:24] You don't have to remember. You don't have to mess it up. You can just do the stuff that has already worked for you in the past. You're not reinventing the wheel. Yeah! As an RA, I'm guessing it's not like you had a ton of spare time, so anywhere that you can shave off unnecessary extra work is advantageous. Kate Pond: [00:06:44] Yeah! And the fact that every time that I had to plan an event, I was like, “How do I do this again?” I don’t have space in my head. I'm trying to learn natural resources management. I'm trying to learn German. I don't need to spend this time also trying to remember how to host an event. So I think that was kind of really where I started doing technical writing. And then in becoming a park ranger, I ended up going and doing a Master's in Australia actually, doing environmental education. In education, you write curricula, right? You write a lot of curricula, and that's technical writing. Kate Mueller: [00:07:22] For sure. You're sequencing. You're trying to think about the best way to present ideas and get engagement. And how are you demonstrating mastery or understanding of whatever it is you're teaching. So many elements that come into play in technical writing. Kate Pond: [00:07:39] Absolutely. And it's all like documentation that you give to someone else so they can teach about fire ecology or sage brush in California. So a lot of that technical writing happened, actually, I would say college and then into my park ranger era and then it was very handy when I did my transition into software development, for sure. And actually, when I started transitioning from being a park ranger, people asked me a lot, “How did you do that? That seems like such a 180, right?” Kate Mueller: [00:08:20] Yes! I mean, the thought crossed my mind to ask you about it as well. Kate Pond: [00:08:25] Yeah. So, at the time in a really weird turn of events, I found myself in Phoenix, Arizona, kind of without a job and kind of like, “What the heck am I doing? How am I going to be a park ranger in Phoenix?” And my partner at the time was like, “Well, what are you interested in?” And I gave them a whole list of things, and they were like, “Have you ever tried software engineering?” And I was like, “What?” I had not, I was like, “No, I wanted to be a park ranger since I was eight. Remember? Junior ranger. Orange County parks and beaches. This is what I'm doing.” Kate Mueller: [00:09:00] This is it! This is the thing! This is the path! Kate Pond: [00:09:03] Right? Exactly. So I was like, all right, well, I'll just Google it: “how to code.” So I Googled it, I'm sure. And then I just went down the rabbit hole, the freeCodeCamp was starting to become a thing, and Codecademy and all these things. One day I was at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and I met up with my friend who was mapping all of the cacti at the garden using GIS. So I was like, “oh, she's technical. She's gotta know something. ‘Hey, Veronica, can you tell me about how you got into what you were doing?’” that kind of thing. And she was like, “Have you ever heard of meetups?” And meetups were starting to become really big at the time. And I was like, “No, what are these meetup things?” I ended up finding every technical meetup that I could find in Phoenix. It didn't matter—it was Swift, C++, Go, JavaScript, HTML, Git, and all of these—version control. And I would go to all of them and I would take down notes. “Okay, I don't know what that means. Sure. I'm gonna write that down.” And I would just Google it! You just make documentation for yourself. I ended up falling in love with Girl Development at the time, because they had curriculum, so they had good documentation. Kate Mueller: [00:10:32] Hey, good docs make a big difference. Kate Pond: [00:10:35] Right? Yeah! So I would go to all of their classes and at some point the chapter lead was like, “Kate, you're here a lot. I'm gonna step down. Do you want to become chapter lead?” “Sure! I guess. Why not?” Kate Mueller: [00:10:54] [Laughter] Kate Pond: [00:10:55] It was cool because they had good docs and they had great curricula, and I could just kind of take over and start doing the things. And I think that's where I really got into the world, because at some point I got really good at or what I thought was really good at HTML, CSS, and a little bit of JavaScript. And I got hired on by a company called Meltmedia in Phoenix and I kind of went from there. Kate Mueller: [00:11:25] I love these kinds of organic stories where it's, “Oh, I just kind of got interested in this thing and then threw myself into it and suddenly I ended up having a job.” I think this is actually more common than not in the tech writing sphere as well. I think a lot of the guests on the podcast talk about how as a field broadly, tech generally, but writing also, very much depends on that sort of continual learning. You have to be somebody who's willing to be uncomfortable not knowing a thing, and you have to be somebody who's willing to put the effort in to learn about a thing that you don't know anything about. Kate Pond: [00:12:05] 1,000%! I think also, it's updating the docs, right? It's like updating your own personal docs, right? It's like you have a commitment to making your life better as well as others’ [lives]. Kate Mueller: [00:12:19] Yeah, it's a good way to think about—I mean, each of those are moments where you're sort of cataloging the stuff you don't know and looking it up and then trying to figure out what it means, and in many cases, documenting that for yourself so that the next time you go to a meetup where that gets discussed, you have a better understanding and so you can absorb more of what's being discussed. And that's not linear at all, but it is a gradual sort of, “Oh, I'm climbing up the bell curve here. Eventually I'm going to feel reasonably competent, at least, in engaging in these conversations.” Kate Pond: [00:12:54] I think it's one of the reasons why tech writers and people who are into documents have a lot of books, have almost libraries, right? I think it's because, “Look, now I can put more stuff into my brain because I have docs over there that hold the information and I can go and look it up.” Kate Mueller: [00:13:14] Yeah. I think a lot of folks I know believe that I'm just deeply passionate about documentation, and I am deeply passionate about documentation. But the reason I'm passionate about it is that I have a terrible memory. And so for most of my adult life, I have been creating my own documentation for, “Oh, it's a process I do once a month at work and I never remember how to do it. Let me just actually write down all the steps involved once so that next month, when I have to do this, it'll take me ten minutes instead of two hours.” And this has only gotten worse the older I get. I've developed a chronic illness that gives me some cognitive issues. So I'm very thoroughly in the “if I didn't document it, I'm not going to remember how to do it in three days, let alone three weeks, three months, six months, however long it goes.” And so much of my “passion” behind documenting is just “I don't remember stuff. And I (a) don't necessarily want the whole world to know that, but (b) I just don't want to waste the time that it wastes every time I forget how to do a thing. If I just write it down, I can follow those instructions, right? I have a set of instructions for every time I get a new laptop. So I install all the right software and I do the stuff in the right order to get my work VPN set up and all that fun stuff, which I didn't do the first couple times, and man, it was arduous. Better living through documentation. That's just it. I don't want to spend my time on that silly stuff. I want to spend my time on the stuff that feels fulfilling, interesting, engaging. Kate Pond: [00:14:55] That's exactly right. That is exactly what it is. That's what it is for me, too. I can't remember all of this stuff. There's no way. And so it's: okay, write it down so that later I can just quickly access it. Kate Mueller: [00:15:08] Yeah. And it's important. I think the counterargument to this is often like, “Oh, well, the internet will just know.” And I'm like, “No, the internet will have 4,000 answers to the same thing, and none of them will be exactly the set of steps that I need.” And I don't want to spend the time patching together those things. I want the set of steps that I know I need because I've vetted them and I've tried them, and I know they work. I think in some ways it's a really natural response to the fact that we are exposed to more information now than at any point in human history, right? There's masses and masses and gobs of it. And documentation for yourself or for your immediate team is one of the ways that you're like, “Hey, let me filter out all that extra crap and give you just what you need to get the thing done right now.” Kate Pond: [00:15:59] Absolutely. 10,000%. You're right. The argument is, “Oh, I can go to the internet.” But oh my God, the internet is so overwhelming. The amount of information we are being asked to take in on a daily basis is incredible. And now, you know, you've got AI, right? And you're like, “Okay, that's all well and great, but how much have we heard about hallucinations? How much have we heard about it being super verbose?” Yes, there are ways to prompt AI to make it easier and better, but like having written your own thing, embedded your own thing? Kate Mueller: [00:16:45] I know when I go to my documentation it's going to give me the same set of steps every time. I can't guarantee that anything AI generated is going to do that, and I can't even guarantee that if I bookmark something on the internet, like a Stack Overflow answer or something, that it'll still be the same when I go back. It might not be, you know? So I think it's both a filter and a sensemaking device often for a lot of us in modern life—I guess post-modern life, whatever we're living in right now. Kate Pond: [00:17:15] Whatever this thing could be called. Kate Mueller: [00:17:17] Whatever this is, this epoch, that's when it's useful, yes. So, Kate, you've obviously had a pretty large career shift over time. I would say park ranger to software engineer is a pretty big shift, at the bare minimum in terms of what your workplace looks like, but also some changes in what your day to day tasks look like. What are you currently doing at this point? What does your role look like? What does your day to day look like? Kate Pond: [00:17:48] Yeah, so just within the last, oh I don't know, eight months or so, I decided to go on a founder's journey. What I did actually is, I was laid off from my previous position, reorg, etc. and I was like, “What?! What am I going to do?” And I realized that what I wanted was some help navigating this. You look at people who are so high up, like in the C-suite and the boardroom, and they all have assistants, right? They can do what they do because they have people that are helping them. It was like, “Okay, well, I've saved up a whole bunch of money from my previous job. I think it's time for me to have an assistant of some sort.” And so that assistant was my career coach, and I've been seeing her every couple of months or so, and we talk about what I want to do. We had talked about how she was part of a startup and she's a co-founder for her startup. And I was like, “Oh! Maybe it's my time to be a founder. Maybe it's time for me to take that journey.” I always thought it'd be really cool to bring the worlds together—the park ranger, environmental education, and software engineering. I was like, “There's got to be an intersection there.” Kate Mueller: [00:19:10] Yeah, it is a Venn diagram. It's just [that] figuring out what the little slice of the overlap is feels like the challenging part. Kate Pond: [00:19:17] Yeah, right, 1,000%. So, I've been working on my founder's journey. I've been creating an application or ideating on an application that would connect circular economy businesses. So, businesses that are refurbishing tables and clothing and repairing these items, taking them and making them into something new with consumers. So, the example I've been giving is: if you have a piece of foam, you can put it in the app and then it would tell you a local business that is doing something with that foam. And if it couldn't find a local business that could use that, then it would record it as a number so that maybe another entrepreneur could be like, “Oh, there's 500 pieces of foam that are being thrown every week. I can actually use that for a dog bed.” So creating new circular economy businesses locally—it would all be a local focus. So I'm calling myself the Chief Ecosystem Officer of The Pond's Edge. Kate Mueller: [00:20:23] I absolutely love it. Kate Pond: [00:20:24] Yeah, I gotta go for that CEO energy. So I've been ideating on that. And that's been really interesting because I've never really done business documentation—making a business plan and all the bits and pieces of that. So it's been really fascinating to meet people who have done these business model canvas, market fit documentation, and creating my own documentation for an app that really nobody's created yet. So it's very cool! Kate Mueller: [00:20:57] Yeah, it's super exciting. I think those are the kinds of solutions we need more of in the world right now. That, “hey, we recognize that many of the existing systems are really broken.” And instead of just bemoaning how broken those systems are, maybe there are ways that we can find to actually fix them so that they are a little bit more sustainable so that we're not being so wasteful, but also so that there's opportunity to invite people in to realize that there is an opportunity in this space for people throwing out foam or whatever that might be. Suddenly you have a source for stuff, which if you're trying to start a business, that's one of those big questions you have to answer is, “how am I going to source the materials I need to do the work that I want to do?” Or, “is there even, like enough supply or demand for me to be able to do that?” and having some information to help–”hey, there is something about this here”–I think potentially encourages more people to enter the space and put their own little solution in place for whatever that little corner of the world might be, right? Kate Pond: [00:22:04] One of the things I really like about it is this thought of it being local. So you get to know your local businesses, you get to have this local economy. And it's the sustainability within your local—what did they used to say? They used to say “think globally, act locally.” Kate Mueller: [00:22:22] Yes, and it's interesting that a lot of the direction tech has gone has been sort of the opposite move of that, which is, “oh, now you can globally source whatever because you now know that that thing exists way over there.” So it is an interesting sort of “let's flip that on its head and use tech to actually help you be more hyper local rather than global.” Kate Pond: [00:22:44] Maybe not a lot of people, but I feel like there's a number of people that I've spoken to that want to be more connected to their local community. Especially in this day and age where we're getting bombarded with information. And that there's kind of this a bit of lack of trust, right? Kate Mueller: [00:23:03] Yeah, totally. Kate Pond: [00:23:04] Are you really the person who I'm really talking to? Are you sure you're not Kate AI? Kate Mueller: [00:23:12] That was the first place my brain went: Are you sure you're a real person and not like an AI agent trained to sound like a real person? Kate Pond: [00:23:20] Right! And I want to meet these people in real life. I want to be donating these goods to people who really exist. I want to be in this community that will support itself and each other. Kate Mueller: [00:23:34] Yeah. To have it feel like an actual community of people that the project actually helps facilitate connection. To help strengthen community bonds and strengthen self-sufficiency within a local community, which would be huge. It's so exciting. Kate Pond: [00:23:51] Yeah, it's really exciting. I just joined a climate based fellowship. I was able to get a really good scholarship to do [a] climate based fellowship, and I've had a few folks reach out to help volunteer build this thing, build this app, make it a reality. But I'm still working on coordinating all the volunteers. It's been such an amazing outpour of support for the idea that I'm having. So that's really cool. But one of the things I'm running into is my own personal runway and not having enough of it. So I recently got hired as a contract for a company called Artium.ai. I've been spending a lot of my time doing that and putting my founder's journey a little bit on the back burner. But kind of the joy in joining a new company is that you get to help them update their orientation docs. Kate Mueller: [00:24:47] You're the fresh eyes. Be like, “well, that's really outdated. My goodness, it doesn't work like that anymore. That's not the person you talk to. That's not the thing you do.” Kate Pond: [00:24:57] Right. That thing is deprecated. Okay! Kate Mueller: [00:25:00] “I just learned the hard way after spending two hours on it. However, let me update the documentation so that your next hire doesn't have to go through that.” Kate Pond: [00:25:08] But one of the cool things, giving props to my career coach and my current partner, they both kind of said, maybe this is a good point to do a retro, right? Do a life retro kind of be like, “okay, how's your founder journey been going? What's gone well? What hasn't gone well? What needs improvement? How can you move forward?” That way when this contract is up, if I decide to return to my founder's journey, I can kind of pick up that documentation. I can pick up the retro stuff that I wrote and go, “cool, this is my next step.” Kate Mueller: [00:25:44] Yeah, it also gives you that moment to take a step back and make sure that the path as you had seen it before is still exactly the path you want to be on. Or to say, “actually, there's a couple small course corrections I want to make here. I've mostly been right, but I think I was starting to veer a little bit in this direction, and I want to recenter myself and come back here.” So sometimes those “distractions” actually end up being good because they give you that extra little bit of distance to be able to view it slightly more objectively, to be like, “is that what I want to be doing? Is that exactly how I want that to be going down?” Kate Pond: [00:26:22] Yeah, not only that, but having this retro doc is going to be so helpful because in a couple of months, I'm not going to remember, right? There's no way! So I'm going to be able to go back to this retro doc and be like, “oh, I see, this is where I left off. This is what I want to do next. This is where it was going. This is how I want to, like you said, either course correct or continue down this path.” So I think it's very handy advice there. Kate Mueller: [00:26:50] Yeah, I think that's fantastic advice from both of them. It's also kind of amusing that they both had the similar ideas: “Hey, why not view this as an opportunity to do a little documentation and also do a little thoughtful reflection about where you want to be and how you're going to get there.” Kate Pond: [00:27:12] Both of them are in software engineering, so they just use the word “retro” and I was like, “oh yeah, retro!” Kate Mueller: [00:27:20] Whereas your average human hearing that is, “are you talking about like the 70s? What are you talking about?” Kate Pond: [00:27:27] [Laugher] Right! Or they'd be like, “why don't you just journal about it?” And I was like, “yeah, journaling is one thing, but I feel like as we know, as technical writers, retro is so much more than just journaling.” Kate Mueller: [00:27:39] Yeah, it is. I think the structure and the format really helps you get at elements that might not come up organically [when] journaling. I mean, not that there isn't value to journaling, there definitely is value to journaling, because sometimes it helps you find stuff you didn't know that you thought or felt about how a thing was going that only comes through in that sort of unstructured way. But the structure of a retrospective is you’re kind of working through a series of these are the topics I want to be sure I cover: what was working well, what wasn't working well, what isn't, what would I like to change that is changeable. I think that structure sometimes forces you to similarly get at things you wouldn't have gotten at otherwise, but in a totally different way than journaling does. Last question before we hop into a break: how would you describe the documentation that you do? Would you say that it's technical documentation? Would you just say that it's documentation? Usually I ask people like, do you like the word tech writer? Would you prefer documentarian? But in this case, since neither of those really applies, I guess I'm just curious how you think about the docs that you do work on. Kate Pond: [00:28:44] I think it's like intermittent technical writer for me. Kate Mueller: [00:28:50] I'm a sometimes-technical writer. Kate Pond: [00:28:53] I'm a sometimes-technical writer, exactly. Because some of the documentation I do is very technical writing. And then some of the documentation that I do, or some of the writing that I do, is journaling. If you were to go to my Medium posts that I've made in the past, you'll find that I have a number of them that are just daily reflections on how I was doing the capstone for my Ada Developers Academy each day—what I learned, and I just put it down. Then you'll find documentation on how to implement a LaunchDarkly feature flag. And you'll find how to use Google Forms to document what you're doing on a daily basis. So I think I'm intermittent. Kate Mueller: [00:29:45] I like it. That's a lovely note for us to take a break on. So we will take a break and we'll be right back. Kate Mueller: [00:29:51] This episode is sponsored by KnowledgeOwl, your team's next knowledge base solution. You don't have to be a technical wizard to use KnowledgeOwl. Our intuitive, robust features empower teammates of all feathers to spend more time on content and less time on administration. Learn more and sign up for a free 30-day trial at knowledgeowl.com. Kate Mueller: [00:30:14] So, Kate, there is something that you mentioned right before the break that I wanted to dig into a little bit more, because you and I have talked a bit about the importance of creating documentation for yourself. And sometimes that's, “I'm creating instructions on how to do a thing.” But you have also previously blogged about self-documentation: documenting what you're doing, either in a learning capacity or as a student or as a worker, what you're doing. Talk to me more about this. I don't feel like I'm introducing it well, but I'm really excited about it. [chuckle] Kate Pond: [00:30:53] I think you did a fine job introducing it, considering that this blog post needs some help. It needs an update for sure, but the blog post is actually called “Google Forms for Self-Evaluation.” Kate Mueller: [00:31:10] Okay, and we will link to it in the show notes, folks. So hop to the show notes if you want to go check it out. Although you have been warned that Kate feels it needs a little update. Kate Pond: [00:31:21] But feel free to comment. I'm happy to accept comments. So this document actually came out of the need of wanting to understand what I was doing on a daily basis and with who. When I got into software engineering, I learned about annual reviews and it was like, “okay, well, I've got to be able to do an annual review for myself and an annual review for others. So how do I ensure that I don't miss some of that information? And graphs are pretty!” [laughter] Kate Mueller: [00:32:01] I mean, who doesn't love a good graph now and then? Kate Pond: [00:32:03] Who doesn't like a good graph? So it seemed like a no brainer to me to start just filling out a daily form. And so I just popped open a Google Form, I created a template, and then every day at five o’clock I would have a calendar invite for myself: go here, fill out your form, and record what you've done and with who every day so that you have these pretty graphs and so that later you can kind of look back and be like, “oh, look at all the stuff I learned! Look at all these cool things that I did with people. Oh, look at how great I'm gonna help my colleagues look, because I will be able to point out specific examples of what they've done.” But not only that, it's great for if you're laid off, right, and you're looking for a job, you can go back and you can be like, “cool, these are the examples that I have. What are some really great examples of when I've accomplished something or had a difficult conversation? Or give me an example of when you had to make a choice and what went into that choice.” Kate Mueller: [00:33:23] Yeah, or “talk to me about what it was like for you to work with people in the product team” or whatever. Kate Pond: [00:33:31] Right. Absolutely. And I've actually been thinking a lot about how I might modify this blog post and how I might modify what I'm doing with these Google Form answers. And I was thinking, for as much as we were talking about AI being sometimes maybe not as helpful, I think it could be really helpful in this circumstance. Take all the information that you've got, pop it into AI, and be like, “hey, create some STAR responses.” [I] can never remember what the STAR acronym stands for, but create the situation. No, I'm not going to try to remember it. But make those so that I can review them for when I go into my next interview and try to get my next job. Kate Mueller: [00:34:17] Out of the use cases for AI, summarizing information often is one of the places that it's decent, right? And so rather than you having to do all of that work yourself, that's potentially a good use case for it. I think this is very topically relevant for a lot of folks who are explicitly tech writers, because the industry is going through a great deal of upheaval at this point. And I definitely know some amazing writers who have been laid off and have been unable to find work. And it is one of those things for me that's always in the back of my own mind. That is, “okay, what could I be doing right now that would better prepare me for that future circumstance?” That would make it easier for me to update my resume. Think about what I want to showcase in interviews. Think about should that day come to pass, what are the things I want to be sure I have copies of for my portfolio before I lose access to some of that? There's a lot of those things, and it can be very easy to be so sort of heads down in the weeds that you kind of forget to come up a little bit for air and think about those bigger picture things. So I'm interested in how you handled your Google Form. It sounds like some of these things might be like “I'm selecting which people I worked with today” or something, but it also sounds like you're doing some freeform text stuff. Talk to me a little bit about what kind of information you captured and how you captured it. Kate Pond: [00:35:46] Yeah. So I originally had two forms. I had one for a daily evaluation and one for a weekly evaluation. I found it challenging to upkeep both of them, but I think that if you're in the right head space and the right place, you can definitely do both and it might be really cool. But I would do things like, “how do you feel right now?” And that would be like a checkbox from 1 to 10. How good do I feel or whatever. Kate Mueller: [00:36:15] So you could quantify it. You could get like an average: for this time period, I was a 7.4 or whatever. Kate Pond: [00:36:22] Right. Yeah. And I could be like, “the next question is what did you work on?” That was a long answer, so you could write out whatever it was you were working on, because then you could go back and you'd be like, “oh, for three weeks. I was just kind of this meh, but what was I working on? Oh, I see, I was just copying and pasting some piece of code from there to there.” I could see why I wasn't very excited about that. And then I could actually take it to my manager and be like, “hey, for the last three weeks, you've had me doing this thing. I'd really like to enjoy my work more.” Kate Mueller: [00:37:00] Can I work on something else? Anything but that! [laughter] Kate Pond: [00:37:04] [Laughter] Exactly. So you do that. I had one thing I learned today. One thing I'd like to follow up on. One thing that I think I can do better tomorrow. One thing that I'm proud of. And then for my last job, I was very interested in moving up the career ladder, the leadership ladder. So I have a “what did you do leadership-wise and how did you handle that?” Kate Mueller: [00:37:33] I think something like this could also be really interesting for–a lot of the writers I know kind of wear a bunch of different hats. For example, when I started at KnowledgeOwl, I was a support owl, and I updated documentation, and I gave demos. And then I started also doing manual Q/A, and blog posts, and a project—I was a project manager for a redesign for our public website and a bunch of other things. And so I think there's also possibly a nice space here for folks who don't have a tidily scoped role to be able to say, “okay, what did you work on for these three areas that are part of your role for the day?” so that you could track, “how much time am I spending on support?” Or “is there a trend between how good I feel and which areas I'm spending more time in? Which hat I'm spending more time wearing?” because that might be a sign that maybe I should be focusing more on that hat, and maybe pursue roles that give me a more singular focus on that hat. I'm already thinking of ways I'm like, “ooh, I like that, but I would adapt it a little bit for me in these ways.” Kate Pond: [00:38:46] For sure. That's kind of the beauty of this, right? You can use it in whichever way you feel suits you. I think the key for me was trying to keep it short and simple at the end of the day. “Oh my gosh, I've just done so much today. I just want to write one sentence.” Kate Mueller: [00:39:05] I want to log off. Kate Pond: [00:39:07] Right!? [Laughter] Kate Mueller: [00:39:07] I know I need to do this thing. Can I do it quickly and be done with it? Kate Pond: [00:39:12] And I think that's what was really nice about having these checkboxes or long answers, but you can just do it in one sentence. Because basically, when you fill out a form, I don't know if you've seen the back end, but it's just a Google sheet of all your answers. It just gives you a spreadsheet. But it's great because then you can just go down the spreadsheet and be done with it. But yeah, that was really important for me to kind of have it be very fine tuned to what I wanted to get out of it. Kate Mueller: [00:39:43] Yeah. And for folks who aren't super into forms, you could also do a similar thing using a spreadsheet with dropdown fields and stuff for a lot of that stuff, and just select it and then drop your text in. There's a bunch of different ways you could potentially set it up to do it. So was it easier for you to do the daily rather than the weekly? I know you said trying to do both of them didn't work overly well for you, so I'm curious which one you stuck with. Kate Pond: [00:40:06] I stuck longer to the daily, and I'd like to get back to the daily. It's just that when you get around to the weekly evaluation, it becomes a lot more daunting. I think you'll even find that in retros at a regular company where people are like, “So how did the week go?” And people will be like, “What did we work on?” Kate Mueller: [00:40:28] I suddenly don't remember anything I did all week. I'm panicking. Other than what I did 15 minutes ago, and the recency bias is not going to be useful here. Kate Pond: [00:40:38] Right! Kate Mueller: [00:40:39] You mentioned graphs being really fun. What did you end up graphing the most in that? Was it like how did you feel about the day, your 1 to 5 rating there? Kate Pond: [00:40:51] Yeah it was usually my daily value [for] “how am I feeling?” And then also who I was working with. So I could see that I was working with one person more than others. I think I may have, I'm looking at the post right now. I'm sure you can tell. Kate Mueller: [00:41:14] What was I doing during that time? Kate Pond: [00:41:16] What was I doing during that time? It's interesting because I also have a long answer of what it was like to work with this person. And if any of that needs improvement. So you can look at the graph like, “oh, I've been working a lot with Jessica and what have I been doing with Jessica? And is there a reason why I've been working with her a lot?” Kate Mueller: [00:41:41] Yeah. Is it that I really like working with her, or is it that we're on the neverending project from hell, and we're just sort of stuck together on this project until it's complete? Kate Pond: [00:41:52] But I think even more I think even more than that. It's not only am I working on this project with this person because it's a neverending project, but am I spending more time mentoring her, or am I spending more time being mentored by her? Those kind of more in-depth questions. Kate Mueller: [00:42:11] Potentially very useful for performance review time, that kind of stuff. If you're being asked to provide performance reviews on others, or if you are kind of trying to track who's been the most useful to you, the most helpful, the most supportive, whatever, having some actual data about that from the last six months or the last year is potentially really useful. So you can speak in a detailed way about it, right? Either in the reviews or let's say you both leave the company and they ask you if you'd be willing to write a LinkedIn recommendation for them or something. And that way you can actually go back through that and be like, “oh, this thing! We worked on this project, it was like a six month long project. We worked together in a bunch of different capacities. She was awesome. And here are some specific ways that she was awesome.” Not just me being like, “she was great, but, you know, she stuck on top of her deadlines. She solved this really tricky problem that nobody else could figure out how to solve. Here's some details on it.” Kate Pond: [00:43:12] Yeah. I think also, kind of coming back to doing interviews, I think the last number of interviews before I got hired at my most recent position, they have asked me, “who do you like working with? What kind of team would you want to work on?” And so knowing, like, these are the things I liked about the people that I used to work with and kind of be like, “oh yeah, I really enjoy the collaboration. I enjoy being a mentor. I really enjoy these aspects of these people that I've worked with, and I would like to continue that.” Kate Mueller: [00:43:44] When you were actively using it, how often did you review what was in there? Was it a set cadence? Was it only when certain things occurred? I'm kind of curious about this, because a lot of what you're talking about is, “ooh, can I identify some patterns between these things?” which does require a certain amount of “let me go back and look a little bit at that stuff.” So I'm just a little bit curious how that process went for you. Kate Pond: [00:44:08] Yeah, I think I probably didn't review it as much as I could have, to be honest. Kate Mueller: [00:44:14] Sometimes just the act of documenting it makes you remember it more, right? Kate Pond: [00:44:17] Yeah, absolutely. I think probably, if I had to guess, like maybe once a month I would go back and take a look at the information that I had gathered, kind of review, make sure that it was a habit. And then it was really when those evaluations came up, it was like, “oh, time for annual evaluation time. All right. Let me set aside some time to look through my notes and find the information for Joe so that I can write down all of that.” Kate Mueller: [00:44:47] Yeah. So that I can give him a good evaluation. This might be a good time to kind of wind down a little bit. So we've covered a whole lot of territory, Kate. I think I'm really interested in: what is a great piece of advice that you have been given? It does not have to do with anything we're talking about. Although it does sound like you've got a career coach. You've got an interesting partner. Maybe there's something there, but it could be anything. I've had people give me advice about, oh, God. Dennis's episode, which just released actually at the time of this recording, his piece of advice was something that the Prince Consort told Prince Harry, which is: never pass up the opportunity to use a restroom. So it does not have to be technical in nature. It could be just general life advice. But what is a great piece of advice you've been given? Kate Pond: [00:45:35] I really connect with that piece of advice to never pass up using a restroom. I just recently learned that my family uses a term for that, essentially that I don't think anybody else uses, and I didn't even know what the origin story of it was. But every time we leave the house, we just say, “give a one for the Gipper.” You use the restroom before we leave. Give it one for the Gipper. So I researched it recently, and it turns out that it's like some football term or something. I don't even know, but that's not my advice. I mean, maybe it is part of my advice. Give it one for the Gipper. But something that I learned recently from my career coach is to find a friend and do a scary hour. So all those things you are putting off—like you were saying, if there's something I don't really want to do, I do it in the morning to get it over with. Sometimes we run into this position where we're like, “oh, I can't even do it in the morning.” I'm so nervous about taking that first step. I’m just held back by, “oh, well, I can do this other thing, get that complete and that'll be great, right?” Kate Mueller: [00:46:55] Or you've built it into this big thing in your head, and it's become so much bigger than it actually is because you keep putting it off. And so there's this accumulated sense of, “oh, this is going to be awful” that is just wildly out of proportion to what the task actually is. Kate Pond: [00:47:12] Right. And so if you find someone who you trust and you hang out with, and maybe they also have these tasks that are bigger in their brain than they actually are, you get together and you do a scary hour. So okay, during this scary hour I'm going to call the bank, right? Kate Mueller: [00:47:31] I am immediately thinking: I have to find a new dentist, and I have been putting that task off. And I'm like, finding a new dentist is totally a scary hour task for me. Kate Pond: [00:47:42] Yeah. So find a friend. Do a scary hour. That is a piece of advice I received from my career coach that I think is pretty great. Kate Mueller: [00:47:50] I love it. That's a great piece of advice. And we already mentioned your blog post, which we will share. Do you have additional blog posts that we could or should share, like a blog in general that we should share as a resource for folks? Kate Pond: [00:48:04] So my website, thepondsedge.com, has a lot of the posts on it, as well as I'm trying to move everything from Medium very slowly over to dev.to. I feel like that's a pretty good platform for my new career, even though it's not as new as it once was. But I would like to move all of my posts over there and start some new posts over at dev.to, and I'll send you the information for that. Kate Mueller: [00:48:41] Yeah, please. We'd be happy to share those links. I love a good resource. Anything where I'm like, “oo, I kind of feel like deep diving on X, how do I do that?” I've gotten such good, weird recommendations from people in this. It's fantastic. I guess that leads us really nicely into: if anybody is listening to this and they are really interested in the work that you're doing or whatever, and they want to follow you or get in touch, what are the best ways for them to do that? Kate Pond: [00:49:09] Yeah, some of the best ways to reach out to me are probably LinkedIn: “oh-kpond” and my email address is kate@thepondsedge.com. So those are probably the two easiest ways to get a hold of me. Kate Mueller: [00:49:26] Beautiful, I love it. We will share all of that in the show notes. And Kate, thank you so much for your time. This has been a delightful conversation. Kate Pond: [00:49:37] This has been fantastic, thank you! I can't wait for this to go into my daily evaluation on my Google Forms. Kate Mueller: [00:49:45] I'm excited! And in fact, maybe I'll go make my Google Form just so I can put it into mine. So, thank you so much. Kate Pond: [00:49:54] Thank you. Kate Mueller: [00:50:01] The Not-Boring Tech Writer is co-produced by our podcast Head of Operations, Chad Timblin, and me. Post-production is handled by the lovely humans at Astronomic Audio with editing by Dillon, transcription by Madi, and general post-production support by Been and Alex. Our theme song is by Brightside Studio. Our artwork is by Bill Netherlands. You can order The Not-Boring Tech Writer t-shirts, stickers, mugs, and other merch from the Merch tab on thenotboringtechwriter.com. You can check out KnowledgeOwl's products at knowledgeowl.com. And if you want to work with me on docs, knowledge management coaching, or revamping an existing knowledge base, go to knowledgewithsass.com. Until next time, I'm Kate Mueller, and you are the not-boring tech writer.