I'm a somewhat experience software engineer (5 years in big tech) and as such I often have to write stuff.
Note that I'll talk about writing to simplify, but technical docs are a mix of writing and doing diagrams, for which I have the same problem.
I know that I write well (don't use this post's title as an example), everyone is always happy with my docs, praising them or even using them as bar-setting for the team so there's no problem with that aspect.
However, I write extremely slowly. About 30 words per hour, most of the time. Writing is a literal mental torture for me, not because I don't like it (I do), but because I make no progress.
To more clearly explain my writing "process", I will usually struggle to start, until I get a small burst of [inspiration / motivation / productivity / ???] (I don't really know what) and I will be able to write a few lines, before my next productivity collapse. And then the cycle repeats all day long, where I will have bigger or smaller bursts (30 seconds to 5 minutes) where I make progress, followed by sometimes hours of inability to focus.
I basically get distracted all the time, by anything. Often I know what to write, but the words just refuse to come out.
The second thing that impairs my speed is that I want to write and format everything well right away. It's not that I can't draft small sections in bullet points, but if I'm writing the actual doc, it has to be perfect, otherwise I will be distracted by the extra space or the title that is formatted differently from the others.
Things I have tried:
- Putting distractions out of my reach: it doesn't help, my mind will just go wandering,
- Going to the office: it's even worse,
- Working with someone else next to me: no difference.
I am looking for suggestions of people that struggled similarly and were able to improve. For example, I remember a website that allowed you to type but not to go back more than 2 lines above to edit, which may help with drafting.
Thanks, and sorry for the wall of text.
PS: I imagine that on this kind of topics people will mention ADHD. I haven't been assessed but I don't think I have it. I was never great at focusing before, but I don't remember it being such an issue in my childhood. Also it seems like it's getting worse progressively (I'm 28).
PPS: As an example, it took me pretty much exactly an hour to write this post.
Then I go through the headers and just bang in a few quick-and-dirty bulletpoints under each heading -- and I do that all the way through the document.
If it needs diagrams, I hand-draw them roughly, take a photo with my phone and copy-paste them in.
Then I do a third pass where I come back, flesh out the bullet points into paragraphs, and spend some time in Excalidraw knocking out the diagrams.
Finally, I do a fourth pass, to tidy up stuff.
The benefit of this approach is that it allows you to compartmentalise the different cognitive requirements into phases. Phase 1: planning, Phase 2: idea capture, Phase 3: wordsmithing and diagramming, Phase 4: proofreading
This approach works really well for me.
If so, get yourself a dictaphone (or use an app that does the same). Record everything you want to say, spoken out loud - it doesn't matter if it's disjointed or informal, you can fix that later. Then play it back and type it in.
If it helps, imagine you're explaining things to another person (or a rubber duck) when you're doing the talking.
Your only task then is to edit it to be more in written style than spoken style, which hopefully will be much easier.
The only other thing I can think of is, maybe you are too stressed to write words down? From what you said, it sounds like you are very anxious about making a mistake.
I usually do a youtube video, go for a walk, or eat for the distraction, and then make some kind of attempt at progress, even if it's just formatting stuff. Setting up all the sections and page numbers and whatever else at the start helps me too, bc I think it's just annoying to try and highlight things to change after writing.
My order is usually: Set up Title/headings/subheadings, font/size/style settings, rough draft of intro for each section, notes/major points for each section, fix any format issues that affect the entire document or an entire section and will not be reinstated by adding more content, flesh out the content in each section (and do not mess with format during this bc as you add more content it will change again anyway), grammar/writing style edit, final format edit.
For the other part (over-perfectioning) really try to write a whole document before starting to review it. You can start small, eg. say to yourself "If i write for 30 without looking back or rewriting any word, I'll allow myself to make edits for 15 minutes".
I know is hard, I have a similar problem (even if not that acute). But is actually much more efficient to edit at the end, than all the time.
1. Outline the next thing you write, before you write it. It sounds like rewriting as you write is a problem. Outlining gets you out of that habit like few other things can. It forces you to focus on what you're trying to convey and who you want to address.
2. You didn't mention anything about you HN (or other media) use. If you're using that as a way to escape, it's time to stop.
Just an idea.