career | Communications from DMN

March 12, 2012 by Scott Nesbitt

Breaking free of your comfort zone

explore Falling into a nice little rut. Getting complacent. Finding a comfortable groove. Wrapping yourself in a cloak of familiarity.

Call it what you will, but most of us fall into the comfort of a routine now and then. Yes, the oft-talked-about comfort zone.

There’s nothing wrong with that. But I find that inhabiting the comfort zone can get boring. Actually, worse than boring. You’ve probably felt the same way. The work is easy to do and feels more like typing than actual writing. Or, you feel the need to move into areas other than just pure technical writing.

Lately, I’ve been feeling that I’ve ensconced too snugly in my own comfort zone. As part of something I call Phase 3 (more on this in the coming months) and as part of the New Cruelty, I’ve been experimenting with ways of bursting free of my comfort zone.

You can burst out of yours too. And doing that just might refresh you, your technical writing, and your career.

Curious? Then read on.

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February 27, 2012 by Scott Nesbitt

Rolling with the punches

No, my hair's not blue ... Ever been stung (professionally) in a way that you thought would never happen to you? It happened to me December, 2010. It was a bit shock, let me tell you.

Take a moment, sit back, and let Uncle Scotty tell you one of his stories:

In November of that year, I started a six-month technical writing contract with a financial firm here in Toronto. The pay, while not the greatest, wasn’t too bad. And having that firm on the client list wouldn’t have hurt either. During the weeks that followed, I got a lot of good feedback about my work and was making good progress on my project.

Then on a Wednesday in early December, 2010 (a month, to the day, from when I started, in case you’re wondering) I got a call from HR. I went to their offices and before the very agitated looking HR person could open her mouth, I said I think I know what this is about. Then, pointing to the envelope on her desk, I further perturbed the poor woman by saying I assume that’s for me …

I, along with 3/5 of the company’s documentation team, was let go then and there. Another department or two had been gutted in the previous day or so, too. But I wasn’t worried. I’d been there before. This was the first time this happened as a contractor, though.

It being December, I knew that there wouldn’t be any longer-term gigs in the offing. Things usually slow down at around that time of year. But by scrambling, I was able to pull together enough short-term work to keep me going for a while.

Here are a few lessons I gleaned from that experience.

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December 30, 2011 by Scott Nesbitt

Favourite posts from 2011: career

Careers in our wacky profession involve more than writing. There are a number of other factors that can make (or break) someone’s career in technical communication. Here are a few of our musings on this topic.

March 28, 2011 by Scott Nesbitt

Dealing with an albatross

If you’re not familiar with that allusion, read this.

Remember when I told you a little story recently about messing up? Well, because the internal client wasn’t satisfied with the way that I handled the project, it was transitioned to another writer. I thought I was done with it.

Well, I was wrong.

For a number of reasons, that project was tossed back around my neck. To say I was unhappy about that sums up my feelings. I thought I’d washed my hands of the project and of the client, but that’s not how things turned out. So I’m slogging through a pair of documents that I’m not really enthusiastic about.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had an albatross of a project around my neck. I doubt it will be the last time. How, though, can technical communicators deal with projects that they aren’t enthused about or which never seem to end?

Here are a few of my thoughts.

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February 28, 2011 by Scott Nesbitt

Messing up

I messed up! It happens to everyone from time to time. You mess up. Sometimes, just a little. Sometimes, quite badly.

Recently, it happened to me. Earlier this month, I started a gig and had a number of projects assigned to me. And I seriously dropped the ball with one of them. Why? A lot of reasons — ranging from being dropped into a project towards its end, a short deadline, trying to juggle a large number of projects, a lack of understanding of the hierarchy and structure of a very hierarchical and very structured organization, and the goal posts being moved a couple of times.

In the end, what happened … well, it happened. No amount of should haves or could haves or ifs will change that. But that incident can also provide some lessons for technical communicators of any level of experience.

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January 19, 2011 by Scott Nesbitt

Leading dual lives

duality As you may or may not know, in addition to helping run DMN Communications, I also write and blog elsewhere. Several elsewheres, to be more precise. Some of you who do know this find it a bit odd.

On more than a couple of occasions, I’ve been asked why I don’t consolidate the content from my other blogs, or do other writing work, under the umbrella of DMN Communications.

It’s an interesting question, and there are two answers to that question.

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