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Tech Writing Templates
MS Word/Excel Templates
Category Archives: Productivity
How Tai Chi Will Make You a Better Technical Writer
Post written by Ivan Walsh. Follow me on twitter I spend 10 hours a day writing user guides, online help and other such delights. One of the hazards of working these long hours is migraine, back pain and (literally) a … Continue reading
Posted in Productivity
Tagged China, health, Home Office, Home-based, Productivity, Technical Writing, Yoga
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20 Tips For Home-based Technical Writers Who Want to Stay Sane
Most of my tech writing work is done from home. I’ve worked from my home office for almost eight years. Some tech writing contracts are on-site, but mostly, I work in my home office. Actually, for the past 19 months, this means working in my ‘bedroom’. More on this later. I’m married, with a little nipper, and friends are always popping over for a chat. Did I mention that I’m also working from China? Continue reading
Posted in Productivity
Tagged health, Home-based, Lifestyle, Monitor, plan, Productivity, schedule, technical writer
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10 Ways to Create Strong Passwords That You Can Remember Easily
How strong are your passwords? In the movie SpaceBalls, the password to all the earth’s natural resources was…12345. It’s a comedy but you get the idea. All those efforts to control the planet and the password is child’s play. I … Continue reading
17 Ways to Write, Respond, and Process 85 Emails a Day
Lost time is lost money. If you run your own company, every minute counts. And, it’s no different if you work for someone else. Lost time = lost money. Email is great for generating business but when it takes over … Continue reading
Posted in Productivity
Tagged Communications, Email. Productivity, Emails, Gmail, Inbox, process, Productivity, Reports, Respond, Write
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What Andrew Chen Can Teach You About Writing Killer Headlines
If you want to see great web copy, read Andrew Chen. I’m going to show you his top 15 posts from last year. What do you see? The headlines are very compelling; smart little nuggets that draw you in. The … Continue reading
Posted in Business Process, Communications, How To, Leadership, Productivity, Social Media, Technical Writing
Tagged Business Models, business writing, Copywriting, fremium, Headings, web 2.0, writing
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Using Google Wave to Write Technical Documents
Maeve asks on LinkedIn how we can use Google Wave to write technical documents. Well, the first consideration is that Google Wave is not designed as a tech authoring tool but for collaboration and ‘almost’ real-time information exchange. Saying that, it does offer many benefits if you need to plan/coordinate/review documents in a networked environment. Here are some ideas. Continue reading
Posted in Communications, How To, Productivity, Reviews, Tools
Tagged Business case, Documentation Plan, Google Wave, Producitivty, Project Plan, Release Notes, Schedules, Wave
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7 Ideas to Inspire Your Business & Laser Focus Your Blog
Denise Wakeman asks, “How am I going to come up with fresh content for my blog three times a week?” She lists some excellent ideas designed to help save you time and stimulate some new ideas. Here are some others you might want to consider. Continue reading
Posted in Career, Communications, How To, Productivity
Tagged blog, Business, Chris Brogan, Google Alert, HootSuite, Ideas
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Getting Things Done: How I Set Priorities
Ross Kimbarovsky asks: “How do you decide what to do next? Should you write a blog post? Answer emails in your inbox? Make several sales calls? Spend time on Twitter? Or should you call a team meeting to discuss a … Continue reading
Posted in Business Process, How To, Productivity
Tagged Add new tag, Decision making, Getting Things Done, Productivity, Project management, Time Management, Vimeo
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How To Differentiate Yourself As A Technical Writer
Tom Peters says, “the value of services will continue to fall” and that the only way to survive is to differentiate yourself from the competition. Is this true? How do you as a technical writer make yourself stand out from … Continue reading
Posted in Books I Like, Career, How To, Productivity, Snagit, Social Media
Tagged Add new tag, Camtasia, Career, Debbie Weil, India, Linkedin, screencast, technical writer, Tom Peters, Video
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How Many Hours Per Week Do Technical Writers Actually Spend Writing?
How much time do you spend writing every week? Remember, you have 37.5 hours (I know!) for technical writing every week, but how much is actually spent writing? When I say writing I actually mean developing content, so this includes illustrations, diagrams, publishing etc – whatever goes into the final deliverable. Continue reading
Posted in Career, How To, Productivity, Tips
Tagged Add new tag, deliverable, developing content, diagrams, illustrations, Linkedin, Publishing, Technical Writing
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How to Write a Target Audience Questionnaire for your Training Plan
Creating a training plan? Before you do this, you need to step a step back and work out what your colleagues need to learn.
Posted in How To, Microsoft Excel, Productivity, Software Development, Technical Writing, Templates, Tips, Word 2007
Tagged Adobe Framemaker, Audience Analysis, Career, contract, form, MadCap Flare, Marketing Plan, Online Help, Questionnaire, Robohelp, Single Sourcing, STC, Structured Authoring, Target Audience, Technical Communications, Technical documentation, Technical Writing, Training Plan
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How To Write Documents Faster & Save Your Fingers From Exhaustion
What to know how to type faster and get those documents out the door quicker?
Posted in How To, Productivity, Technical Writing, Tips, Word 2007, Word 2010
Tagged Adobe Framemaker, Career, contract, MadCap Flare, Microsoft Word, Online Help, Productivity, Robohelp, Single Sourcing, Spelling, STC, Structured Authoring, Technical Communications, Technical documentation, Technical Writing, Text replacement, Time-, Time-saver, Tips, writing
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Janet Swisher on FLOSS Manuals, Open Source, and Book Sprints
Want to know how to run an open source ‘book sprint’? Janet Swisher does.
Posted in Dita, Productivity, Social Media, Technical Writing
Tagged Dita, FLOSS Manuals, Open Source, Scott Able, Toolkit
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How Tai Chi Can Make You a Better Technical Writer
Does technical writing give you a headache? I spend 10 hours a day working on user guides, online help and other such delights. One of the hazards of working these long hours is migraine, back pain and literally a pain … Continue reading
Posted in Career, How To, Productivity
Tagged Alternative, Beijing, Chinese language, English language, health, Produc, Productivity, Qigong, Tai Chi, Tai chi chuan, Time-saver
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Is this true? The goal of a project is to make the user successful!
Ben says: “The goal of a project is to make the user successful at what he wants to accomplish. Go ahead, read that previous sentence a few times. It’s one that would do well to sink in.” Is this true?
Posted in Career, Content Management, How To, Productivity
Tagged Advertising, Business, Call centre, Customer Management, Goal, management, Product, Public relations, Technical support, Usability, Users
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How To Make 200 Extra Minutes Every Week & Leave The Office Before Everyone Else
Looking for time-saver tips? This works. I get between 60-200 emails every day. 60 is low. Once I got over 480. As I run my own business, every minute is counted. Even when I worked 9-5, I kept a tight … Continue reading
Posted in Productivity
Tagged Business, Chris Brogan, E-mail, Gmail, Harvard Business Review, Hotmail, Prod, seth godin, Time-, Time-saver, Time-wasting, Yahoo
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What is the 'search, compare, verify' generation?
Image via Wikipedia Gerry Mcgovern Success on the Web is not about making customers do what you want. It is about helping customers do what they want. My Lenovo laptop has great battery life. The battery lasts for 650 thousand … Continue reading
Posted in Business Process, Productivity
Tagged Advertising, Battery, Business, Consumer, Content Management, Customer service, Marketing, Mobile Phone, strategy, Technology, user interface, Vodafone
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How to Blog Almost Every Day – Use the Inverted Pyramid story format
Image by jonathansin via Flickr Do you want to update your blog every day? Chris Brogan provides this framework for writing a blog post (almost) every day. He adds that while it’s not easy, once you develop the right habits, … Continue reading
Posted in How To, Productivity
Tagged Advice, Alltop, blog, blogging, Chris Brogan, Creative Commons, Delicious, Flickr, Techniques, Tennessee State University, Tips, wikipedia, writing
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4 Hour Work Week – Downloadable Checklists to be More Productive
I avoided reading Tim Ferris’ blog, the 4 Hour Work Week, for the longest time. My mistake! If you want to learn how to save time and be more productive, this blog is gold-dust. It’s a cut above the rest as it backups up his philosophy with real case studies that demonstrate how his methods work. Continue reading
Posted in Books I Like, Productivity
Tagged 4 Hour Work Week, Checklists, download, Productivity, Tim Ferris, Time Saving, Tips
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