Write first drafts in a text editor

A minister caused a stir on Wednesday with a hand-written resignation letter.

Writing by hand can help with creativity but realistically I suggest you write the first drafts in a text-editor app rather than with a pen.

Here’s why.

A text editor app is just you and your words. There’s no formatting to play with or other distractions.

The files are very small and can easily be uploaded to a cloud storage service (Google Drive, One Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, wherever you use) and be accessible from other devices including your smartphone. It becomes possible to work on the text in at different times, in different places with different devices.

The text file you create is universal. Once done the text can be copied and pasted into any word processing app, but also could be pasted into the body of an email or a text message or the content management system for a website and so on. As there was no formatting in the text there is no formatting to be screwed up by the transfer.

If you use different devices you can use different apps to edit the text because the text is not in a proprietary format. I happen to use an app called Ulysses because it is available on all my devices. It manages the 140,000 words of my book manuscript just as well as these shorts posts of fewer than 500 words. You may need to do some research to find the best apps to suit you but you can start with the built-in apps: TextEdit app on MacOS and Notepad on Windows.

Stop writing finance reports like they are crime novels.

Whether writing an email or a 20-page report we tend to think of it needing a beginning, middle and end. This encourages to adopt a (chrono)logical structure along the lines of:

Here’s a problem ==> This is the cause ==> Analysis of possible solutions ==> recommended solution

The problem with this kind of structure, for busy people at work, is that the important bit is at the end. They have to work through all your analysis to get to the answer. Report-writing is not (or should not be) a way for you to show off about all the analysis you have done.

A better way, one focused on the needs of the reader rather than the vanity of the writer, is to bring the end to the front of the report. Tell the reader the recommendation first and then explain why. This means a structure along the lines of:

Here’s the recommended solution to a problem ==> Why is that the recommendation? ==> analysis of possible solutions

One advantage of this structure is the potential for it to be framed more positively. It starts with suggestions for solutions (improvements over the status quo) rather than the negative experience of describing a problem or challenge.

Next time you are planning a report see if you can structure it so that the reader gets the conclusion/recommendation without having to read a long story.