Writing While Remote

At the time of writing, many people around the world are forced to work from home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This sudden transition to working from home is a major change for most. Fortunately for those of us new to remote work, there is an experienced remote workforce willing to share their knowledge.

One of the areas of advice that sticks out to me is around managing communication and interruptions. A lot of this thinking has been spurred from this two part Q&A session on the Rework podcast. At Basecamp, they have a bias towards asynchronous communication:

At Basecamp our perfect-world rule of thumb is 'real-time sometimes, asynchronous most of the time'.

Why asynchronous

The major benefits of preferring written communication are (1) improving the quality of the conversation and (2) avoiding decreasing the quality of other work. These benefits come from:

Giving the author more time to flesh out and express their ideas.

This allows the author to cover the topic more comprehensively.
Avoiding disrupting the work of others.

It's often unnecessary to immediately interrupt someone to discuss an idea. Avoid disrupting others (potentially reducing their quality of work) by sharing ideas in a format that can be consumed on their time.
Giving consumers more time to think and respond.

Just like it's often not necessary to interrupt someone to share an idea, it's also usually not necessary to give an immediate response.

Asking a question in-person or via chat can set a tone of expecting prompt replies. Instead, we should be giving readers some time to think about the idea and form thoughtful feedback.

At work, we have started leveraging longer-form, asynchronous communication in the form of SBARs. We are using the Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation format as the output of some of our more exploratory spikes on a new project. Since reviewers have more time to read and think about the recommendation, we have seen feedback that changed the recommendation and saved us from going down a potentially wrong path.

Another benefit we have found is having an "artifact" that documents the discussion and decision. We can revisit the decision-making process to understand why we chose to go a certain way. I am optimistic this will be like git praise, but for larger decisions.

Wanting to get better

After hearing the suggestions and seeing some initial benefit of preferring written communication, I am striving to make it my preferred form of communication. Even when we are back in a more traditional office setting, I plan to maintain a bias towards asynchronous, written communication.

Now that I am bought, I want to work to get better at it. For me better means:

Faster - part of the benefit of this style of communication is taking the time to flesh out your thoughts, but I believe I have some opportunity around translating thoughts into words on a page more quickly.
Clearer - with synchronous communication, if you don't make sense at first, the person can immediately ask you to clarify. You lose out on this quick iteration with asynchronous communication. Ideally, taking the upfront time to flesh out the writing can help avoid these issues.
More varied - while I keep calling it "written" communication, it doesn't have to be all text on the screen. There are times when images, charts, diagrams, etc. could be included to better communicate a point. I want to be able to leverage these additional tools when they would improve the ability to deliver my message.

One way I am trying to improve my written communication is through practice; specifically, by writing more blog posts.

(Deliberate) Practice

To get better, I need to practice.

With writing, a common suggestion is to write every day. While I do some non-code writing each day at work (creating tickets, writing up code reviews, etc.), I want to find opportunities to "practice" outside of doing the "real thing" at work.

To start, this practice will be daily 20-30 minute writing sessions where I work on blog posts of varying topics.

This separation between practice and doing the real thing is inspired by the idea of deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice is in the sphere of the 10,000-hour rule covered by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. Proponents of deliberate practice believe that simply doing the thing you want to get better at will not move you into mastery. Instead, you need to practice in ways that will continue to push you to grow your skills. While I don't expect to become a world-class writer, I think there can be value in taking some cues from deliberate practice and developing my practice regimen around these ideas.

To start, let's take a look at what the six traits of deliberate practice (as interpreted by this article by Cal Newport) are:

Designed to improve performance - You should be stretching beyond your abilities during practice.
Repetition - Similar to writers' suggestion to write every day, you should regularly work on your skills. One key aspect of deliberate practice is working on developing the skill more than just when you are using it for the "real" task.
Feedback - When practicing, you should have external feedback readily and continuously available.
Mentally demanding - The article contrasts the "mindless" act of practicing scales with deliberate practices which should require you to be mindful and focused.
Hard to do - By doing things that stretch you to your limits and that you must focus on, you are likely going to be doing something difficult for you. The article specifically calls out deliberate practice as not doing something you do well and enjoy doing.
Driven by good goals - Goals should focus on the process of getting to the outcome and not just the outcome alone.

How Am I Doing

How does my current attempt at writing more through blogging stack up against the traits of good deliberate practice?

Designed to improve performance

Clear and succinct, long-form writing to a wider audience is currently pushing beyond my limits.

Hopefully, through practice, this will become easier for me. As I approach that point, to keep the deliberate practice stretching me to my limits, I will need to change my routine. I may need to push myself to write for longer sessions, cover topics I know nothing about, or find ways to incorporate visual aids into my writing.

Repetition

I am currently working to spend about one Pomodoro of time (25 minutes) each day writing for non-work purposes (i.e., posts for this blog). This isn't a large amount of time, but there is consistency and it is in addition to my normal writing duties.

Feedback

I think this is the biggest hole I have in deliberate practice.

The ideal would be to have an editor review my work after each writing session. A more realistic approach may be to get reviews on drafts of my posts.

I could start by asking people I know. However, depending on my goals, at some point having a professional editor review my work and provide feedback may be necessary to get to the next level.

I do not currently have any plans around this, but it is something I will be considering as my practice regimen continues.

Mentally demanding

I do find I need to be focused to write. Since each post is on a different topic, I can hopefully avoid falling into the trap of "doing scales" and performing mindless repetitions.

There are aspects of the process that are easier than others. One example of an easier task is using a tool like Grammarly to check spelling and grammar. Rather than accept suggestions, there's an opportunity for me to better understand why something is grammatically incorrect or how a word is properly spelled.

Hard to do

I have found writing and editing my posts to be difficult. I often find I go into a post thinking I know what I'm going to write, but when sitting down to write struggle to get the idea out in a coherent manner. Instead, I have to spend a lot of time shaping and connecting my thoughts to get an idea fully formed. Even when I have a draft in place there are numerous rounds of re-reading and editing to try to improve it.

Driven by good goals

I currently don't have very clear or specific goals. Essentially, I want to write more because I think it's a good skill to have (and I want to build habits that make me more like the person I think I want to be).

Since my current aim is to write for a small amount of time every day, that may be considered focusing on the process more than the outcome.

Conclusion

Please consider favoring asynchronous communication at work for a few weeks and see what the results are. If, like me, you find value in them, work with your team to adopt practices that promote this style of communication.

You may also consider what practices you could adopt for yourself to improve your ability to write. While there is room for improvement (especially around a very key component of feedback), I am hopeful that my short, daily writing sessions move me in the right direction. If blogging doesn't interest you, consider journaling, working on open-source documentation, or creating tutorials (written or videos).