Anyone who’s been in the business of writing will inevitably get burned out and lose focus of what they’re doing – the biggest signs of burn out being when time seems to be always working against you and the realisation that your work doesn’t have the same level of spunk as before.
From amateur to professional writer, burning out is like finding yourself stranded on a desert island. Even though it can happen to the best of us, it’s essential that we learn how to move forward, as unfocused writing is both bad for business and painful to read . If you’re worried about being unfocused (or already are), this article is for you!
Why the rush?
In an insightful discussion between Forbes contributor and writer Bruce Tulgan and Harvard Business School MBA writing coach Mark Rennella, they discuss the psychology behind urgency and how it negatively affects our writing.
“One of the reasons that you might find a lot of business leaders being less effective in writing than they might be is that business rewards very quick thinking,” describes Rennella. “Because lots of problems pop up, all of a sudden you’ve got two weeks to figure it out, and you’ve got to draw on all your experience in the moment.”
As a consequence of being forced to think quickly all the time, Tulgan has a hypothesis that businesspeople are also doing the same with their writing – which leads to sloppiness in delivery and meaning.
With email and correspondence being the most common forms of business writing, we believe Tulgan’s theory is plausible. How often have you received an email from someone with spelling/grammatical mistakes or instances that made you go “Huh?”. Not only do these sort of messages take extra brain power to process, they are also an inefficient use of time (especially if they include extra rounds of back-and-forth correspondences to clear up).
These scenarios happen all the time because we’ve grown too accustomed to replying quickly, as we’ve been drilled into thinking that fast response times equate to being hard at work. Unfortunately, no matter how fast we can shoot out replies or cook up good ideas, poor writing will always undermine such efforts.
“For these speed demons, it is helpful to remember that writing is often a way to test, improve and express unclear ideas over time,” explains Tulgan. There’s a very clear distinction between expressing an idea through text versus in person. Given that writing can be read and interpreted at the leisure of the reader, there’s often more to gain from carefully planning out your message versus spewing out your thoughts onto the page and hitting send.
Here are some considerations to make as you write up your message:
· How much time do you have before you are obligated to respond?
· What do you need to cover in your message?
· Did you prioritise the most important points at the top of the message?
· Does anything need explaining or context to make sense?
· Did you spellcheck and grammar check?
· Read your message over again – check the flow to see if anything reads weird and to see if you left out anything
Who are you writing to?
Responding to a colleague’s funny email is very different from answering a client’s request. Obviously.
However, what about a Google Hangout message from Dave in HR asking about how you’re fitting in with the team? Or an online group brainstorming session? These sound more serious than replying to a colleague’s joke… so it makes sense to pour in lots more effort, right?
Rennella and Tulgan would argue that the amount of effort you use would depend on context.
“Every communication habit has its place. If you want to talk about lots of stuff, keep it light. And it’s perfectly fine to keep it light if it’s for the right audience,” says Rennella. “But if you want deep understanding, thorough understanding, or to confront a complex problem, you need to focus.”
Reusing our scenarios above, you need to remember that Google Hangout is essentially an instant messaging system and that messages there are often conversational and casual. If Dave really cared about your input, he could have requested a meeting (or drafted a formal email at the very least). As such, a simple “I think it’s going pretty well J” would achieve the same effect as “I believe my time so far has gone swimmingly and I can’t have asked for more, as my team has been very inclusive, considerate and…”
How about for the brainstorming session? Is this a preliminary brainstorming session where everyone was just briefed on the subject? If so, these tend to be casual and open to suggestions – feel free to just throw your ideas out there! However, if you were given the weekend to think up ideas, then you’d definitely want to be more articulate with your presentation and to integrate a narrative.
Just as it’s improper to go about every conversation casually, you don’t need to go full-focus on everything. Being able to identify when to be relaxed and when to be serious can help your brain squeeze out extra mileage!
Not all struggles are negative
If you’ve worked at a marketing agency, you’re probably familiar with erratic workloads. You could be free as a bee before lunch and then slathered in new projects, urgent revisions and meetings by 6pm.
In such cases, it’s not unusual to feel lost and uncertain about how to deal with the influx of work – which leads to the fear of taking risks and following through with innovative ideas.
“I think people are scared of uncertainty when they’re writing, especially if they’ve been told in school, ‘you can’t write well, you’re not clear.’ And every time they run into a bit of a thicket on their journey to writing a paper, they shy away from it,” explains Rennella.
Although uncertainty and challenges can be scary to deal with, the saying “you can’t get a spark without friction” is also true. Some of the world’s best ideas arose because of difficult circumstances.
Just because you’re in a tough spot doesn’t mean that you should shelve your creativity. Speak to your supervisor or client if you have an idea or process that you think could work – you might just find that they are more receptive to change than you think!
About that draft
Whenever we’re in a hurry, the deliverable is always going to be our primary focus. If a client wants a revision sent to them in 2 hours, our job is to whip up the edit and send it off as soon as possible. But is this truly the most efficient way to work? Rennella and Tulgan would disagree.
Getting a draft out first should be our priority instead, and we think this is due to the psychological trigger behind the words deliverable and draft. You see, when we think deliverable, we think of a potential end product – once it’s been submitted, you can’t do anything else (until the next round of feedback anyway). A draft, on the other hand, is much more flexible and can be edited on a whim.
“Jumping straight into a composition is a sure-fire way to end up with ‘a million problems, that’s when you get your Frankenstein monster,” the pair point out. By starting with a draft, you can identify the key points that must be covered, which can then be arranged into a hierarchy, like so:
· Key theme
o Main point 1
§ Supporting evidence or details for p1
o Main point 2
§ Supporting evidence or details for p2
o Main point 3
§ Supporting evidence or details for p3
o Supplementary information (if relevant)
o Interesting ideas that are not relevant to this theme (save for later use)
Once you have a proper flow and arrangement of what you need to write, the draft ensures that your writing process becomes a lot smoother and it helps to prevent avoidable mistakes. Just don’t forget to edit the draft and to have someone else take a look at it – an extra pair of eyes can be handy for picking out writer biases.
Readjusting and refocusing ourselves isn’t too difficult when we know what to look out for. If you’re ever feeling burnt out or unmotivated to write, give Rennella and Tulgan’s tricks a shot. A bit of organisation and discretion might just be what you need to reignite your flame for writing!