7 tips to help you document

Here are a few small ideas to help you document your systems.

Collect everything

Pull quotes from Slack, take screenshots of websites, and record audio clips. Dumpster dive in your Downloads folder and save all of these PDFs you've been collecting. Sometimes you won't have time to write good docs, but you might still be able to put together a resources page.

Put it all together

Choose a single location for your documentation and commit to it. Make it easy to put stuff in it, but hard to delete anything.

Create some kind of index

Create a central document that links out to everything else. Make sure to keep it up to date at all times. Your index is your treasure map. You will use it to make sense of your mess.

Look at the stats

People in your team will refer to the same documents again, and again. Notice which pages are visited more often and find out what they have in common. Do more of what works.

Create templates

Make it easy to create more documentation. It's easier to fill out a template than starting from scratch every time. Use your popular documents as example.

Delete as you go

We accumulate old stuff real fast. Wrong information is worst than none. Don't hesitate to nuke what you will never use again.

Short is fine

Sometimes just a few sentences will do. People don't read. Make your point, and move on.

In short

  1. Collect everything.
  2. Put it all together.
  3. Create some kind of index.
  4. Look at the stats.
  5. Create templates.
  6. Delete as you go.
  7. Short is fine.

I hope you found this valuable

I send out an e-mail whenever I publish new content. It's free. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever you want.