Write It

Take to writing to help scale the transfer and maintenance of knowledge.

Writing is a force multiplier. It’s a way to broadly scale your thoughts, which is necessary in a large organization of people. Writing is a tool that holds you accountable, too, in that there is no second guessing what you think: it’s in writing. Writing can be referenced. Writing that can be referenced (and discovered) is durable over time.

Be wary of writing too much. Consuming writing can be expensive, so you don’t want to DoS people with too much writing. Ergo, don’t use writing for frivolous things. Keep it important.

–

Writing solidifies, chat dissolves. Substantial decisions start and end with an exchange of complete thoughts, not one-line-at-a-time jousts. If it’s important, critical, or fundamental, write it up, don’t chat it down.

Speaking only helps who’s in the room, writing helps everyone. This includes people who couldn’t make it, or future employees who join years from now.

Poor communication creates more work.

[1]

Different forms of communication and education and how they all interleave. Different levels of “canon” and then referencing these in other communications to keep human overhead low. But tracking down the right information is hard, human experts can tell you what to look at and send you a link. Rather than explaining it every time.

Paraphrasing from [2].

–

Writing is thinking.

Forces you to articulate houghts coherently, into parts that boil down to primitives, and those parts growing up into statements, arguments.

Talking gives you too many escape hatches. Lets you cover bad logic too easily. It’s fleeting. It’s useful, at a certain time or place, but writing solidifes.

\n