Too busy to write knowledge base articles? Check your email.

One of the main reasons implementing a knowledge base is so difficult is because everyone that has the information is too busy to write articles. I know, I’ve been saying it for years and listening to others say it too.

Today I read (and re-read) an amazing productivity article on the Zapier blog called How to Scale Yourself and Get More Done Than You Thought Possible. I personally found these tips very helpful for my own happiness and productivity, but what I found more impressive was how they could be applied to all of us in the “too busy to write knowledge base articles” boat.

Our “too busy” excuse is sort of bullshit. As Tim Ferriss explains, “Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action”. Why is that? Let me share some of the insights from that post to explain.

Understand Effectiveness Versus Efficiency

Productivity geeks will often argue the difference between being effective and being efficient, mostly that what’s efficient is not always effective. So what’s the deal?

According to blog author Danny Schreiber, “effectiveness is doing the right things” and “efficiency is doing things right”.

You want to have an effective knowledge base – it’s the right thing to be doing for your customers and your coworkers. But it can’t be effective if you are too busy to write the articles.

If you think you are too busy to write articles, that seems like an efficiency problem. Why? Check your email.

Conserve Your Keystrokes

Back in 2007, Jon Udell wrote a great post called Too busy to blog? Count your keystrokes, which was obviously inspiration for this post’s title. In it, he explains his principle of keystroke conservation, especially in response to people who claim to be too busy to blog.

When people tell me they’re too busy to blog, I ask them to count up their output of keystrokes. How many of those keystrokes flow into email messages? Most. How many people receive those email messages? Few. How many people could usefully benefit from those messages, now or later? More than a few, maybe a lot more.

Interesting, isn’t it? When looking back on all the emails and support tickets I sent to coworkers and customers over the years, I realize how wasteful my keystrokes have been. Plus, when I realize that I’ve already answer ed something, I often go searching through my email and ticket history to find my previous answer, usually with little to no success. What a waste of time.

So you are too busy to write knowledge base articles? Really? You don’t seem to be too busy to write emails responding to customers and coworkers. While your emails might be effective, they probably aren’t the most efficient use of your keystrokes. Danny suggests the following:

Keep your emails to 3-4 sentences, Hanselman says. Anything longer should be on a blog or wiki or on your product’s documentation, FAQ or knowledge base. “Anywhere in the world except email because email is where you keystrokes go to die,” he says.

And if that’s not simplest explanation of why you aren’t actually too busy to write your knowledge base articles, I don’t know what is.