Latest / The Not-Boring Tech Writer / Kate sounds off on small things and repairs
Transcript
- Kate Mueller: [00:00:05] 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: [00:00:22] Hello, my lovely, not-boring tech writers. I'm Kate Mueller, and this is one of our solo episodes where I share things I'm thinking about or working on. I'm recording this episode near the end of October, in between baking pumpkin crinkle cookies and taking bags of donations to various organizations. Something about fall makes me want to both bake and tidy, I guess. First, my progress update. Since my last episode, I improved my total count by 34 edited articles, bumping my grand total from 658 to 692. I re-edited quite a lot of articles that I'd previously made small updates to, so my actual total here was probably closer to 65. I also reworked our Required Reading feature documentation and helped launch our new Style Guide feature documentation. So there's a chunk of docs work that doesn't show up in those numbers. In a surprise to probably no one, my very optimistic announcement that I had less than 50 articles in my punch-down list prompted me to run some more detailed searches, and I discovered, of course, an entire chunk of content that hadn't made it into my punch-down list. So I'm thinking right now, my current remaining list is probably around 70 articles, which is still not bad, I just…I'd been really excited to tell you I was done, and I'm definitely not done. Kate Mueller: [00:01:48] Also, since several of you have reached out about my mice infestation, things have been fairly quiet on the mouse front the last few weeks. I'm not sure if that's due to the success of my mouse countermeasures or my counter-mouse measures, or if they're just lulling me into a false sense of security. Only time will tell. I'm, at this point, not sure if I will finish dealing with mice infestation or this docs audit first. Both of them feel like they're never going to end, but it does feel a lot easier for me to share some of my reflections on Dennis's episode. I've already found myself using some of the tips he shared. For example, I'm working with Veronica at KnowledgeOwl to start building out some video training content, and we had a meeting this week to discuss some preliminary video standards. And almost immediately, I said, “Well, we're not doing the thing where we share a video of our face in a little circle the whole time.” And Veronica agreed, partially because she knows how much I hate thinking about my facial expressions. But then I said: “No, it's also because of science. Dennis shared with me that from a multimedia learning perspective, it's a terrible idea to share your little face somewhere because it makes it harder for people to absorb the actual content of the video.” And it felt really great to have more than a gut feeling to inform that decision. Kate Mueller: [00:03:11] I've also had a very long-running goal to add more visual assets into the Support KB, and after my conversation with Dennis, I'm even more convinced that this is the correct approach for some of our trickier concepts. As we all know, I'm in the midst of other big updates already, so it's probably going to be a while before I get to this, but I promise I will report back when I finally do. I also appreciated Dennis's discussion of focused mind versus diffuse mind, and how visuals basically give your focused mind a brief pause and therefore a break to let diffuse mind take over. As a tech writer, I do spend time thinking about visual layout of my written content, of giving visual space, using bullet points or numbered lists, or shorter sentences, or whatever it might be. But I haven't heavily thought about visual assets as a form of space and pause. It's not a space I've been comfortable in, and so I'm now chewing on that a bit more as I think about ways to approach feature overviews or conceptual overviews. But taking a step back from those details, I find myself returning to a couple big themes from that episode. The first is that Dennis's long career is yet another reminder of just how much growth we do as technical writers. Different guests have described this in different ways as flexibility or adaptability, continual learning, improvisation, shapeshifting, becoming a more technical technical writer. Kate Mueller: [00:04:48] But this has been one of the core themes of our interviews in 2025, and Dennis feels like just a great example of that. He's worked in a variety of different domains with a bunch of different titles and roles. His toolset and knowledge have definitely had to evolve in huge ways over time, and he's still constantly learning new things. The second theme I keep coming back to was Dennis's response to my question about where do I begin if I'm not an artist and I don't feel confident in this? And his answer began like this: “What I'm willing to do is draw and let other people see what I've done. That's the first thing. Get over yourself. Get over your reticence. Realize that if you draw a picture, you're doing better than seven billion people who did not sit down and draw a picture today. So that makes you an artist. And I believe everyone is an artist, not a question of talent. It's just a question of time. How much time you spend fiddling with it.” “Get over yourself. Get over your reticence.” feels like the kind of statement I need embroidered on a pillow or something. There's usually one moment with each guest that I flag for our editing team as being pure gold. I don't know how other podcast hosts do this. I'm guessing they don't use the phrase “pure gold.” Kate Mueller: [00:06:08] But for me, those gold moments are the single shining moment I want to be sure we don't lose in the edits. They're the comments that stick with me, and that I can feel are going to stick with me. And this comment from Dennis was that moment of pure gold. As soon as it came out of his mouth, I knew that I was going to be talking about it in this solo episode. And I think part of why it stuck with me is that it's made me realize that while I'm generally totally fine flinging myself into writing tasks I'm not overly familiar with, I have felt eminently unqualified to work on visual graphics that weren't, you know, like, let me give you a brief video of the product and talk about it. I don't know if this is a me thing or just a general writer thing, because we feel better with words. But if you're at all like me, this might be something for you to spend some time thinking about, too. That you know, set it aside, get over yourself, get over your reticence. Just try it. Spend some time doing it. Imposter syndrome is real, and it's sometimes quite valid. But there's also the idea of doing something a bit uncomfortable because you know it's going to create something better for your readers. And I'm not saying run out and add hand-drawn visuals to your docs, just as Dennis didn't suggest that. What we bring as tech writers is that dual superpower of simplifying the complicated and empathizing with the reader. Kate Mueller: [00:07:42] Abby Covert closes her lovely work How to Make Sense of Any Mess with a metaphor that feels appropriate here. She says, “Be the filter, not the grounds. When making a cup of coffee, the filter's job is to get the grit out before a user drinks the coffee. Sensemaking is like removing the grit from the ideas we're trying to give to users. What we remove is as important as what we add. It isn't just the ideas that get the work done.” While Abby is talking about information architecture and sensemaking, I believe this is also a great description of what we do as tech writers. We get the grit out before a reader drinks the coffee. We do this so often with words, but I firmly believe we need to do it with visuals, too, and the resources Dennis shared are a great entry point to that work. And this might be a great entry point for a quick break. Ad [00:08:41] 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: [00:09:03] As I expected, October has proven to be a lot of maintenance work on my part for all the reasons I mentioned in my last solo episode: a lack of energy and focus as I continue to recover from Covid. You'll probably notice my voice is still a little weird. Yeah. Teaching the Information Architecture Master Class and catching up on a lot of work after teaching the Information Architecture Master Class. Also, apparently, fall is just a time I like to get both my actual house and my metaphorical docs house in order. And during October, I also decided to do a cleanup effort in my neighborhood. So one day a week, I've been putting on my hiking shoes and a very brightly, obnoxiously colored hat or t-shirt, grabbing a pair of latex gloves and a trash bag, and I go out and walk the main road near my house and pick up trash from the ditches. I live on an island, and that road is the main road that connects us to the mainland. So this road has a fair amount of traffic. Probably in a surprise to no one, I really underestimated how long this would take. I thought I'd be able to do a mile at a time or something, and right now I'm filling up a trash bag in about half a mile total. So I go a quarter mile out and then a quarter mile back, and that's a full trash bag. Kate Mueller: [00:10:31] I just did not at all realize how much trash was actually out there. Apparently, there is someone who drives this road regularly who likes to throw pretty much anything out the window. So fast food wrappers, beer cans, alcohol nips, to-go coffee cups, articles of clothing. I've found all kinds of interesting things. Also, since I live in Maine, sometimes there's like, you know, dead things. I don't pick the dead things up, just to be clear, but I do have to deal with getting around them. And as I've done it more and more, I've now gotten a little more elaborate. So now I carry two bags so I can separate trash from recyclables as I go. And then when I get home, I go through the recyclables to figure out what has a deposit and can be returned. It's definitely a process that's gotten more evolved and involved than I thought it would. Why am I doing this? A half mile of substantive cleanup once a week on a road that realistically, not a lot of people travel in the grand scheme of things, feels like a tiny drop in the bucket. I'm not even sure if any of the neighbors who drive the road notice. Nobody's honked or waved. I'm not even sure they can tell what I'm doing. I think they think maybe I'm just the weirdo in the ditch, I don't know. But every time I drive on this road now, and I hit the stretch that I've picked up, I smile. Kate Mueller: [00:11:59] And as I get more segments done, maintaining them has become easier and easier. And so my current hope is that by the time it snows, I'll be able to carry a single little plastic bag rather than a large trash bag and I'll just pick up whatever random pieces of trash have been thrown out the window in the last week, instead of spending my entire time bending over and picking things up. It's a small act of care, really. I suspect that's why I'm doing it. I care about the place I live. And my suspicion is that I enjoy docs maintenance work for the same reason. I care about the place I live. I also care about the docs place that I create and maintain. And one of the ways that I express that care is by doing a lot of these small things. Do my readers notice? I'm guessing mostly not. I'm guessing a chunk of them are like the drivers going by on my road, never noticing that this little half-mile stretch now looks trash-free. But there are others who probably are aware, who notice the difference, even if it's just that they can feel the difference between the stretches I've tidied up and the other stretches. But I suspect all of us, on some level or another, can sense care even if we aren't consciously aware of it. Kate Mueller: [00:13:22] Right after I started this little weekly cleanup walk, my friend Ari Weinzweig, who's a co-founder at Zingerman's, shared his weekly e-newsletter. The subject that week seemed really appropriate. It was “Small Actions Matter in Much Bigger Ways than We Might Imagine: Pint-sized ideas, the struggle of self-doubt, and learning to take action anyway.” I will link to this in the show notes. And in the essay, Ari shares a personal mantra he's been using lately, which is: “It's a small thing, but it's something.” He then goes on to say, “Whether we're talking about organizational improvement, self-development, or resistance to autocracy, the truth of the matter is that big things almost always start small. Grand strategies sound great, but the reality of real-life change is that it's mostly a series of small things. Each on its own can easily be ignored. If the initiator descends into self-doubt, the actions might never happen. This essay is an encouragement to act anyway, to look self-doubt in the eye, take a deep breath, and take positive action.” Kate Mueller: [00:14:34] In documentation work, the big grand strategies are often the things we're most excited about, but the actual implementation of those strategies tends to be multiple series of small things. And many of those small things aren't glamorous–a lot of them are tedious–but taken as a whole, those small things add up to a much larger change. If we give in to self-doubt or the idea that we don't know enough or aren't good enough as writers to tackle them, none of that change is possible. Kate Mueller: [00:15:08] Despite what feels like the neverending nature of my docs audit and update from last year, which I'm still working on in October, I can categorically tell you that the KnowledgeOwl Support KB is in much better shape now than it was when I began all this work back in December 2024. Our feature documentation, especially, is much more consistent and clear. A number of other pages have fallen into line with the style guide as I stumbled across them making more substantive updates. The curse of me ballooning my own scope for the audit has also meant that the improvements I'm seeing are quite significant, both in the micro and the macro. Ari's observations align with Dennis's point about getting over yourself. If you let self-doubt win, you're never going to do the small things that add up to something big. Adding a single visual asset to a page probably doesn't seem like a big lift, but it's much like tidying up the trash on my road: it's a signal to your reader that this page is cared for and maintained, that good humans live here and take the time to do good work, that you actually want them to have a pleasant experience, that you care. In my experience, that sense of shared humanity also prompts readers to extend me a little grace when my documentation isn't perfect or, in many cases, to provide actual feedback when they find something wrong, instead of just being quietly disgruntled about it or judging me. Kate Mueller: [00:16:38] Although, since much of my audience are tech writers, I'm sure they are also judging me. But talking about this reminds me of something else I read recently. I'm sorry, today is just the day of “let me reference all these other things,” but there's just a lot of stuff that's coagulating in my brain. I recently joined an email list from a man named Harrison Gardner. He is an eco builder. He's the author of a book called Build Your Own: Use What You Have to Create What You Need. And he's the co-founder of a West Ireland nonprofit called Common Knowledge, which focuses on helping people develop the skills and confidence to live more sustainably, offering classes in everything from homebuilding to mending clothes, making furniture, and do-it-yourself projects. The most recent issue I received from him included this thought: “Repair something this week. Big or small, something broken, worn, or long ignored. The handle that's loose. The jumper with a hole in the sleeve. The drawer that sticks. The chair that wobbles. The bike light you've been meaning to replace. Don't repair it to make it perfect. Repair it to make it yours. To add another chapter to the story. Even the tiniest act of repair can shift how you move through the world. It says, ‘I care about this. I'm not done with it yet.’” Kate Mueller: [00:18:05] Whether we think of it as Ari's small thing or Harrison's act of repair, whether it's picking up trash or doing some docs maintenance, these small things do make a difference. Give your docs some care this month and recognize that care might not be a big something, but a hundred small things. It might be repairing something that feels broken. It might be tidying something that feels messy. Whatever it is, do the small thing. That's what I have the energy to tackle right now, so it's what I'm doing. And if you're also feeling overwhelmed by big things, but tackling small things is working for you, maybe drop us a line and let us know what you're working on. And if you have ideas for topics or guests, as always, if there's a bit of the tech writing world that your life would be improved by hearing an episode on, or if you'd just like to tell us what you're getting out of the show, or you've got ideas for swag, please message us on LinkedIn or Bluesky @thenotboringtechwriter or email tnbtw@knowledgeowl.com. Kate Mueller: [00:19:17] 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.