Finding it hard to write at work? Maybe you should pick up the phone

Often-times writing is hard because you’re not clear about who it’s for or what it needs to do. If you don’t have those two things clearly in mind, you’re almost certainly going to put off starting, go in circles or spend ages putting in way too much information.

Writing can be hard work and take up a lot of time.

If you’re feeling uncertain or don’t have all the information you need, phone the person who knows. A quick call might save you hours of work and re-work.

A phone call opens up the opportunity to ask questions and gather all kinds of useful information. Maybe what you’re trying to write has already been done by someone else (hooray!) and you can link to that. Or maybe you’re better off making a short video, putting your info into a graph or illustrating the idea with an image.

I reckon the best part about making a call or sending an audio clip is that they help create and maintain warm human connections and inject some energy into your project. Talking to someone might help you move beyond, ‘Ugh, writing is hard,’ to ‘Wow, sharing this important information is a worthwhile challenge.’ Or, if that’s an optimistic bridge too far for the kind of communications you do, your writing task will at least take you less time and you’ll have the information you need to get the job done well.

This could be a generational thing, but I prefer a phone call for questions that can’t be answered with a single email. Some people prefer instant messages, however I think that has the same limitation as email – they’re still a back-and-forth that makes it hard to uncover the underlying issues. In a real conversation where I can hear the emotions in the other person’s voice, I find it easier to uncover other reasons my writing task might be more difficult than it needs to be.