To wrap up the series on protecting your time (see Part 1: coding and Part 2: focus), I want to briefly talk about writing. Putting information in written form and making it widely available is a great time saver. It removes the burden of having to communicate things 1:1 over and over.
Write more
As you design systems and write code, you start accumulating some specific pieces of knowledge in our head. Invariably other people will need this information and they’ll come to you and ask. You can save your time by putting things in writing, for example:
- Blogs/Wikis: These are great for writing ‘how to’ guides or for compiling lists of resources (pointers to documents, data locations, tools, etc). Thinks of these are your personal FAQ.
- Code comments: Properly documenting your code can make it easier for others to use without bugging you. Most languages have comment syntax and tooling to convert these into documentation automatically (e.g. .Net XML comments).
- Design docs: Documenting design decisions is a great way of: a) discussing and validating ideas prior to implementation, and b) capturing decisions and the reasoning behind them since invariable they’ll question or revisited later on.
Broadcast
But what about the writing that you already do? Can that be made more efficient? Think about all the writing you do in email/IM. This is great for a lot of purposes. However, it has one major drawback: the information ends up locked in individuals’ mailboxes.
When responding to an email ask yourself: is this something that could be useful to others? If so, write a blog post or wiki instead and respond with the link. The post I wrote on Changing jobs and programming interviews started with an email from a friend who asked for some help and resources after I had gone through my interviews. Putting it in the blog means a lot more people can read it and I don’t need to communicate this again and again.
Scott Hanselman makes this point in a post by asking you to think about the number of keystrokes you have left, and to use them wisely.
Do you have other ways of saving time by writing?