Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode, I talk with Sarah Walker, a technical writer and yoga instructor, about how yoga principles like establishing foundations, respecting people’s time, and embracing practice over perfection can transform your approach to technical writing and help you create more mindful, user-centered documentation.
Sarah and I discuss her path into technical writing, which began with yoga instructor training where she discovered how much she enjoyed breaking down complex processes into foundational steps. This experience taught her that effective instruction—whether for yoga poses or technical procedures—requires understanding your audience's needs and building from core principles. We explore how yoga's emphasis on establishing solid foundations directly translates to documentation, where starting with fundamental concepts helps both beginners learn and experienced users refresh their understanding.
Sarah and I discuss her path into technical writing, which began with yoga instructor training where she discovered how much she enjoyed breaking down complex processes into foundational steps. This experience taught her that effective instruction—whether for yoga poses or technical procedures—requires understanding your audience's needs and building from core principles. We explore how yoga's emphasis on establishing solid foundations directly translates to documentation, where starting with fundamental concepts helps both beginners learn and experienced users refresh their understanding.
We explore the yoga principle of Asteya (non-stealing), particularly how it applies to respecting readers' time and attention. Sarah explains how this philosophy shapes her approach to writing clear, concise documentation that helps users efficiently get to their goals. We discuss practical applications like using consistent style guidelines to reduce cognitive load and being mindful of which content is essential to include in your docs.
Our conversation also covers how yoga's concept of practice over perfection applies to technical writing careers. Sarah shares how documentation evolves alongside products and why embracing this constant change rather than striving for perfect static content leads to better outcomes. We explore the parallels between sequencing yoga poses and sequencing information in documentation, the importance of observing your audience's needs, and how both practices require patience, self-compassion, and continuous learning.
About Sarah Walker:
Sarah's been writing and crafting stories since she was able to put pencil to a Peanuts 3x5 top-spiral memo pad and record her stories in her own scribbly alphabet. Since personal alphabets scribbled on tiny pieces of paper don't pay the rent, she embarked on her career as a professional writer and editor after graduating from St. Edward's University (Austin, TX) in 1998. As an industry editor with Hoover's for roughly seven years, she covered biotech, pharmaceuticals, health care systems, venture capital, investment firms, and other sectors as a member of the Finance and Health Care editorial team. She earned her Austinite bone fides by getting hired by and, 18 months later, laid off by Dell, where she served as a technical editor for the Global Technical Training and Curriculum Team for products and software for consumers as well as small and midsize businesses. Thanks to the Great Recession and other market forces and personal demands, she bounced around a bit from writing and editing features, self-help book summaries, U.S. Pharmacopeia monographs, and other technical-ish content.
She began her technical writing career in earnest at Libre Digital, where she spent much of the second decade of the 21st century documenting procedures for processing various magazine titles as well as a platform for book publishers to distribute their titles to digital marketplaces. After a two-year stint as the managing editor (and lone full-time, non-contract employee) of a local bimonthly magazine targeting affluent residents of "West Austin," at long last (in August 2020), Sarah landed a job that gave her the Technical Writer job title, and she's been writing about the Monetate platform ever since.
Sarah's second career as a yoga instructor (and briefly a Pilates mat instructor) began in 2005, after she completed her 250-hour instructor training with Yoga Yoga (now defunct, just like the college in Santa Fe, NM that she attended for the first two years of her undergrad studies). She taught part-time until 2012, when primary job demands and other responsibilities forced her to give it up.
Resources discussed in this episode:
- Garbl’s Writing Center
- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
- Sarah’s Elect a Raccoon Overlord article
Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky
—
Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:
We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:
Contact Kate Mueller:
Contact Sarah Walker:
Contact KnowledgeOwl:
Creators and Guests
Host
Producer
Chad Timblin
Chad is the Head of Operations for The Not-Boring Tech Writer. He’s also the Executive Assistant to the CEO & Friend of Felines at KnowledgeOwl, the knowledge base software company that sponsors The Not-Boring Tech Writer. Some things that bring him joy are 😼 cats, 🎶 music, 🍄 Nintendo, 📺 Hayao Miyazaki’s films, 🍃 Walt Whitman’s poetry, 🌊 Big Sur, and ☕️ coffee. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Bluesky.
Guest
Sarah Walker
Sarah's been writing and crafting stories since she was able to put pencil to a Peanuts 3x5 top-spiral memo pad and record her stories in her own scribbly alphabet. Since personal alphabets scribbled on tiny pieces of paper don't pay the rent, she embarked on her career as a professional writer and editor after graduating from St. Edward's University (Austin, TX) in 1998. As an industry editor with Hoover's for roughly seven years, she covered biotech, pharmaceuticals, health care systems, venture capital, investment firms, and other sectors as a member of the Finance and Health Care editorial team. She earned her Austinite bone fides by getting hired by and, 18 months later, laid off by Dell, where she served as a technical editor for the Global Technical Training and Curriculum Team for products and software for consumers as well as small and midsize businesses. Thanks to the Great Recession and other market forces and personal demands, she bounced around a bit from writing and editing features, self-help book summaries, U.S. Pharmacopeia monographs, and other technical-ish content. She began her technical writing career in earnest at Libre Digital, where she spent much of the second decade of the 21st century documenting procedures for processing various magazine titles as well as a platform for book publishers to distribute their titles to digital marketplaces. After a two-year stint as the managing editor (and lone full-time, non-contract employee) of a local bimonthly magazine targeting affluent residents of "West Austin," at long last (in August 2020), Sarah landed a job that gave her the Technical Writer job title, and she's been writing about the Monetate platform ever since. Sarah's second career as a yoga instructor (and briefly a Pilates mat instructor) began in 2005, after she completed her 250-hour instructor training with Yoga Yoga (now defunct, just like the college in Santa Fe, NM that she attended for the first two years of her undergrad studies). She taught part-time until 2012, when primary job demands and other responsibilities forced her to give it up.
What is The Not-Boring Tech Writer?
Some people hear the phrase "technical writing" and think it must be boring. We're here to show the full complexity and awesomeness of being a tech writer.
This podcast is for anyone who writes technical documentation of any kind, including those who may not feel comfortable calling themselves tech writers. Whether you create product documentation, support documentation, READMEs, or any other technical content—and whether you deal with imposter syndrome, lack formal training, or find yourself somewhere in the gray area between technical communications and general writing—there's a place for you here.
Each month, we publish two episodes: an interview with an amazing guest focusing on useful skills or tools that can help you improve your tech writing skills, and a behind-the-scenes solo episode with host Kate Mueller about what she’s working on, struggling with, or thinking about in her daily tech writing life.
The Not-Boring Tech Writer is generously sponsored by KnowledgeOwl, knowledge base software built for people who care, by people who care.
Kate Mueller: [00:00:04] Welcome to The Not-Boring Tech Writer, a podcast sponsored by KnowledgeOwl. Together, we explore topics and hear from other writers to help inspire us, deepen our skills, and foster our distinctly not-boring tech writing community.
Hello my fellow not-boring tech writers. Today I am very excited to welcome to the podcast a woman who has a great deal of a celebrity fan club within KnowledgeOwl because she is the author of an article called 'Elect a Raccoon Overlord', which I believe was originally an article designed to kind of showcase the capabilities within KnowledgeOwl. But one of our support team discovered it really early on, and it became the thing that we shared among the team, and so anytime she submitted a support ticket and we had to ask a question about it in Slack, someone would pipe up, 'that's the raccoon overlord lady, right?', and so she will forever be known within KnowledgeOwl as the Raccoon Overlord Lady. But you can meet her as her real name, which is Sarah Walker. Sarah, I am so excited to welcome you to the pod.
Sarah Walker: [00:01:19] Raccoon Overlord lady. I love that, I'm dying.
Kate Mueller: [00:01:25] And the only reason I could say this with confidence is that I actually did a Slack search before we started this interview, and the number of times that someone says, “That's the Raccoon Overlord Lady, right?” was just astounding to me. So I really do want you to know how much the team has forever appreciated the steps and guidance in how to elect a Raccoon Overlord.
Sarah Walker: [00:01:50] That was the most fun I'd had writing anything for a very long time, and it was just my way of, we were testing KnowledgeOwl and rather than doing something for work, I was just like, let's have some fun. And it worked out so well, and I'm so glad that it brings such delight to so many people.
Kate Mueller: [00:02:18] It does. It really does. We've now created a version of it that we share in the Style 101 KnowledgeOwl Workshop Learning Series, so it will live on long after the recording of this episode, Sarah. I guarantee it.
Sarah Walker: [00:02:34] It'll be on my gravestone: “Here lies Raccoon Overlord Lady”.
Kate Mueller: [00:02:41] That's it. You have. You've peaked. I feel like it's all downhill from here.
Sarah Walker: [00:02:47] It was a good ride.
Kate Mueller: [00:02:49] It was, it was. And you've left a wonderful text for future generations to pore over. So thank you. So aside from writing really fun things about electing raccoon overlords, can you tell us a little bit about your tech writer villain origin story? How did you get into this field in the first place?
Sarah Walker: [00:03:09] I started out, technically speaking, as a technical editor at Dell. I was looking for a job during the Great Recession, and I'd already spent seven years as a business writer for a website called Hoovers, bought by Dun and Bradstreet. I don't think it exists any longer. And then I tried my hand at teaching yoga and pilates full time, and it was in my yoga teacher training that I discovered how much I really enjoyed thinking about how to break down even just the most simple of poses like mountain pose. It looks really simple, but it's more complex than it appears. And that really set me down a path of that technical approach to thinking about things. And so when the technical editor job at Dell opened up, it was really easy to apply what I learned about steps and thinking through a process and noting that process, as well as my knowledge of PCs and all that stuff. And I got the job, and I worked with folks who wrote the training curriculum for the global support at Dell. And editing that helped me hone my own thinking through processes, breaking down processes. When that job ended and I was in my next gig, an opportunity arose to document a new software tool that that company was using for workflows and processing digital texts. And I loved it so much. I just really enjoyed breaking down the various processes because we had people in different roles using it, and I loved it, and I got really great feedback from it, which was nice. And so when someone that I'd worked with at that job, Libre Digital, joined Kibo Commerce as a technical writer, she let me know that, ‘hey, they've got another opening. They're looking for another technical writer.’ And I'm like, well, cool, because I'm really not liking the job I had at the time, which was managing editor of a local magazine for really rich people. Not fun. Not fun to write up text about watches that cost three times as much as you make in a year.
Kate Mueller: [00:06:16] I guess.
Sarah Walker: [00:06:17] Yeah. So I applied and I was able to present–I had actual work to show them. It's like, these are technical documents I wrote. I also showed them the style guide that I had written when I was at Dell for the team that I worked with, and they seemed pretty impressed. And as soon as I joined, I pretty much started working on the Monetate side of the business. And so when Monotate was spun off from Kibo in 2023, I went with them, and here I am writing technical documentation.
Kate Mueller: [00:07:00] I was going to say, are you a solo writer with Monetate, at this point? Are you part of a team? What does that look like?
Sarah Walker: [00:07:06] I am, I am the lone survivor at this point.
Kate Mueller: [00:07:09] So a dedicated solo writer at this point, you're not getting extra help, it sounds like.
Sarah Walker: [00:07:14] Yeah, I think I might need that gravestone sooner rather than later, honestly.
Kate Mueller: [00:07:21] Is technical writer the label that you would choose to describe yourself with or would you use something slightly different?
Sarah Walker: [00:07:29] Yes, I choose technical writer. I am a writer. I write. I use technical skills, I apply techniques, and also I am crafting artfully, which the Greek base of technical is 'techne'. I should have consulted my brother-in-law, who's a Latin and Greek scholar, about how to pronounce that word correctly. But that's a word about art and craft and skill and that's what I have. So I am a technical writer.
Kate Mueller: [00:08:15] I like it. There is a lot of craft and skill in what we do. I think sometimes folks who don't do the role don't understand how much craft and skill actually goes into doing it.
Sarah Walker: [00:08:28] No kidding!
Kate Mueller: [00:08:31] But I want to go back to a thread from your villain origin story, because this is one of the things I am most interested to talk to you about. Is that the ways that being a yoga instructor both got you into technical writing but also, what can we as technical writers learn from being yoga teachers? Are there things that we could apply within the work that we do on a day to day basis? Give me your wisdom, Raccoon Overlord Yoga Teacher.
Sarah Walker: [00:09:03] Well, there we go. There's a title. So when I got into fitness instruction, a lot of people would be like, “Oh, well, all you have to do is just queue positions”. Like, you know, “Now it's triangle pose”. No, there's a whole lot more to that. I mean, I had 250 classroom hours of training and that included anatomy, physiology. There was teaching practicum as well. And there's so much that's going on in a yoga pose. And in addition to that, there's the yoga literature, the yoga traditions that as you are, yes, teaching physical positions and you're teaching breathing and you're teaching mindfulness of the body in space. You are also aware of who those people are on those mats that you are teaching and taking into consideration their needs, because they are the students. It's about them. It's not about you, which is something that I've encountered some folks over the years who think what they produce, it's about them. And I have to remind them, no, it's about the end user, it's about the reader. Keep that in mind and keep in mind as well that the readers range from beginners potentially to folks who have been using the product, the platform, the features, the functions, way longer than you've had this job. So keep them in mind as you are crafting, as you are teaching. So that's one aspect of it.
Kate Mueller: [00:11:09] Yeah, because this is a thing in technical writing that we have to handle is that you've got people who are brand new to the product, maybe not very technically savvy, all the way up to those highly experienced advanced power users who probably have more experience with the tool than you do as the writer, and you are trying to find ways to write for that full range. I'd imagine yoga instruction is the same thing. You are trying to instruct people like me who are incredibly–I'm not going to say bad, that's a judgy word–but often very awkward doing yoga, who struggle getting into a number of the poses, who don't have a huge background with it, but really want to be there, feel value in being there, as well as the folks who've probably been doing yoga longer than you have, as the instructor.
Sarah Walker: [00:12:02] One of the things that one of my mentors would say is it's not that you have something wrong with you, it's that the floor is badly built for you. And so we're going to prop you up. And that was wisdom that I would frequently pass on in the classes that I taught because, yeah, sometimes not all positions are right for all people, and not all functions, necessarily in some product or feature, are ready and accessible to brand-new users. They need help. They need guidance to start from the basics, and it's helping those folks to learn the foundation. What's the basis? What's the foundation here? What's the core idea? So when I'm writing a doc, often a task, I will start with, okay, so what's the core idea here? What's the end goal? What do we need to know first? And you get that. In an asana, often it's: how do you position your feet? How do you balance your weight on those feet? Seated poses: how do you connect your sitting bones to the floor? How do you elevate your spine? How do you find that? It's the foundation, and then you build up from that. And by teaching and emphasizing in the documentation that foundation, that base principle, beginning folks learn, and grizzled old users can be reminded of that core function, core idea. Because sometimes you've been using something for so long, you forget. So it's nice to have that reminder.
Kate Mueller: [00:14:17] I've heard the distinction made a bit between being unconsciously competent and consciously competent, and I think sometimes when you're very experienced at a thing, you forget how much you actually know about the thing. And so being reminded of those foundational concepts or elements of the pose or what have you, is a way to kind of enforce the conscious competence there, where you are aware of how much and how far you've come, so to speak. And yet, those foundations are still incredibly important, right?
Sarah Walker: [00:14:55] And it's also helpful, too, by establishing that foundation, if you have users who've been doing something for many years, and then they have to focus their attention on some other aspect of the tool or other functionality, and they get immersed in that and then they have to come back, I will readily admit I have been in this exact situation. I've been in this exact situation recently where I used to write a lot about Monotate's product recommendations feature, and then I had to switch my focus to another new feature set. I've been working on that since the end of October/November, and I recently had to go back to product recs, and I was like, oh, I think I have forgotten some really core ideas of how certain pieces work. And so I went back into a couple of the docs and I found the fundamentals. I found the foundation for how product recs worked. And I was like, “Oh, I'm so glad this was recorded!”
Kate Mueller: [00:16:06] How do you go about developing a sequence of poses as a yoga instructor? Like are you focusing on–you start with a foundation pose, and then there are elements of that foundation that you kind of build off of? So there are certain parts of the body that you're focusing on? How does sequencing work in the yoga world?
Sarah Walker: [00:16:28] I think for each instructor it can be unique, but the way I learned it was: Okay, what time is it? What have the students been doing before they came into your room and rolled out their mats? Are their bodies warm? Have they been sitting all day? What time of day is it? What's the weather like? And so then you think, do I want to start standing, or do I want to build up to the ultimate pose by having them warm up their back? So you can start prone, lying face down. Is that supine or prone? I don't remember at this moment. It's that choice. It's starting in a position where the students can reconnect with their bodies and have time to check in with their bodies. How are those bodies feeling? Are there parts that are ehhhh? Are there parts that are ahhh, bright and happy? And then once they've reconnected with their bodies, start connecting their bodies with the earth. Maybe it's in through the feet in Tadasana, in Mountain Pose. Maybe it's through their entire front side with a very gentle Lotus, just extending out through the toes, out through the crown of the head. Not any big arm and leg lifts, but just very gentle extension and contraction with the breath. Feeling that flow of body on breath, feeling the contact of the earth or your mat with your body to help you come inward and to find your own metaphorical foundation, if you will. And then as the breath really starts to flow, as the body better connects with the breath and you find that connection, then you can start warming up more of the bigger muscle groups.
Kate Mueller: [00:18:45] How much of that sequencing is something that you think about in advance as an instructor, versus how much of it is something that you make decisions on by observing how your students are doing in the pose? I'm wondering how much of that is feedback-based, kind of seeing where your students are, versus how much of it is, I've kind of sequenced this out in my head, and I'm going to roughly allot this much time or whatever.
Sarah Walker: [00:19:21] I had experience as a student learning sequences from teachers, and this was just as a student in classes, not a student in teacher training. And you begin to feel what feels right. And so for me, when I began teaching, I relied a lot on getting to know the regulars who would come, and watching their bodies. Even in Tadasana, Mountain Pose, you can learn a lot about where a person is and just taking in that knowledge. Not passing any judgments, taking in that knowledge, watching them move through some basic breathing, through some basic forward folds, just basic poses and tuning in that way and quickly filing through. Where do we want to go today? And going that way, there were times when I would go in and I'm like, “Hey, how are you guys doing? What do you feel like? Anyone have any requests?” I would often take requests. As for feedback, I didn't often get a lot of feedback. A lot of times students were like, “Oh, great class.” Okay, cool. Thanks. And I always told them at the end of class after the final namaste, I was like, “Questions? Comments? Dirty jokes? I'm here for you”–a phrase I now close one of my meetings with. I always joke that I'm going to report myself to HR for that. Again, it was a lot of observation. And the one aspect of the technical writing role that I am in now is that I don't have much opportunity to get–I hate to say the word useful, but in a way it is–I don't get much useful feedback. I've asked people, “Hey, does this sequencing make sense? Does the wording here make sense?” And more often than not, the feedback I do get, and this is only from internal folks. It's like, “Oh yeah, it's great. Oh yeah, it's great.”
Kate Mueller: [00:21:59] It's like “Great class”.
Sarah Walker: [00:22:02] Yeah. I'm like, okay.
Kate Mueller: [00:22:03] Except you're missing that piece that you have as a yoga instructor where you can do the check-ins with your students to see where they're at, right?
Sarah Walker: [00:22:13] Yeah. I mean, I can see how if the technical documentation were coming out of the support group—if the support folks were the ones writing the documentation—how they could have a better opportunity to get feedback. Hey, client A, you asked about how to do X. I sent you a link about X. Were you able to accomplish X based on that documentation I sent? I would not mind having that sort of opportunity, but I'm not in that space. And there have been times that I wish I could maybe go to one of the client summits that Monetate has just to have an opportunity to talk directly to clients myself. But yeah, they’re I think they’re often in London, big cities, and that's not going to happen. But yeah, typically it's been, you are at a remove when you are doing the documentation and you are not part of the client-facing organization. And I will admit, sometimes I am a-okay with that. Just leave me alone and let me write my docs. Just let me do my work. Let me go play in the platform and pretend that I'm a brand-new user and test out this new feature and find out where the pitfalls potentially are if you are a new user and then write accordingly.
Kate Mueller: [00:24:06] Although the one thing I will add on to that is that I absolutely love when KnowledgeOwl hires new people, because it is the one opportunity I get for somebody who is brand new to the product to give me direct feedback on the docs. And so I will siphon up any of the new people to be like, “Hey, tell me, which docs you used, where you struggled. Whatever.” Some of the absolute best docs feedback I have ever gotten has been from new hires who weren't experienced using the product, were really struggling to get through, and as a result of that went to the documentation. And I actually could get some of that direct experience with folks.
Sarah Walker: [00:24:51] That's a fascinating opportunity because I learned the platform that I document by trying to use the existing documentation and finding all the places where it needed to be updated, and then taking on all those updates and taking on the role of the user and finding [that] maybe the things in the tool had changed since the documentation had been written and there just hadn't been a technical writer around, because that happens.
Kate Mueller: [00:25:30] Totally happens.
Sarah Walker: [00:25:31] Or the folks who were in charge of the documentation just didn't have time. I find too frequently that documentation just—yeah, it's there. Let's move along. Let's put out the next product. Let's put out the next feature.
Kate Mueller: [00:25:49] It's also tricky because a lot of us don't just do documentation. A lot of us have other work that we do, or even the process of writing documentation requires identifying subject matter experts to get the information you need to update the doc, or get them to review the doc to make sure that it's accurate. And I often say that writing is the easy part because it's a lot of that additional–Who do I need to talk to about this? How do I get them to provide the feedback I need?–whatever that is. A lot of the people management stuff is much harder than the actual documentation.
Sarah Walker: [00:26:29] In a way that that kind of leads me to something else I learned as a yoga teacher trainee and as a yoga instructor: respect people's time. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali is a foundational text for the program that I went through as a teacher trainee. In it, Patanjali describes the yamas and the niyamas—the thou shalts and the thou shalt nots. And one of them is Asteya, non-stealing. And in the very first class on yoga literature, we were talking about these. And the instructor who was the co-owner of the studio said, “It’s easy to see Asteya as ‘don’t steal stuff, don’t take other people's things, pay for stuff’”. But it's also a metaphor, if you will: don't take people's energy, don't take people's time, if you can help it. As an instructor, end your class on time, don't take time away from your students for the things that they need to do after class. Don't take away the time from the instructor who follows you. Don't steal the time away from that instructor's students. End your class on time.
And so, when I'm writing documentation, I think about: how do I make this doc beneficial and useful and respectful of the reader's time and attention? What essential information needs to go in here? What's extraneous and can maybe go into a different doc? Working with the folks who submit the documentation request. Working with the SMEs [subject matter experts]. How can I respectfully get from them the information that I need, the reviews that I need them to perform, without claiming too much of their time? Because when you're working frequently with SMEs–your product experts, your platform experts, your product managers–they have a lot on their plate already. And I try very hard to ensure that when I ask a question, I make it as clear as I can about what information, what precise information I am needing them to provide or to confirm. I try very hard not to ask open-ended, vague questions. It's like, is it this or is it this? Or is it that? Or have I completely misunderstood it, can you explain it? You know, I need this doc reviewed. I need you to perform that review by this deadline. However, if you need more time, I understand. Just let me know. I am willing to work with you, but I'm going to try my best not to make great demands on your time. I'm going to try very hard not to steal time away from you. As a reader, I am not going to steal time away from you doing your job by making you read a bunch of stuff that's poorly written. There are adverbs that could be struck, that just kind of meanders, doesn't get to the point until about seven paragraphs in. Doesn't have tight construction of the task steps, provides unclear screenshots. That's stealing that reader's time. If the reader has to pause and go, “What am I supposed to be looking at in this screenshot?” Or, “What did I just read?”
Kate Mueller: [00:30:42] And on that note, I think we'll take a quick break.
This episode is sponsored by KnowledgeOwl, your team's next knowledge base solution. You don't have to be a technical wizard to use KnowledgeOwl. Our intuitive, robust features empower teammates of all feathers to spend more time on content and less time on administration. Learn more and sign up for a free 30-day trial at knowledgeowl.com.
Kate Mueller: [00:31:09] I had an experience recently. It was software documentation and they had some steps. And then instead of a screenshot or a couple screenshots, they had a single GIF running through all of the steps. And there was a part of it that I was actually trying to figure out, because the UI had changed or whatever, and so I was trying to figure out where it was. And I must have had to watch that GIF, which I could not pause, like 15 times in order to get the exact section of it. And for me, that is a classic example of not being respectful of my time. I kind of hate GIFs anyway, but if you're going to use them, use them for a very discrete thing. Don't walk through like eight steps in the thing. Think about doing it in a mindful, very deliberate way. This is part of my style guide: we use screenshots, unless it is an interaction that you cannot capture in a screenshot, in which case you have a GIF that is just that interaction. If you're trying to capture a typeahead search auto-suggest, where you really kind of need the action to show folks what's triggering the auto-suggest list, that's one of the few cases where I use a GIF. But I'm not showing: How do I get to that field? What happens after I select one? I'm literally just showing: This is what the auto suggest looks like. And there are so many places like that where if you're not thinking about being mindful of your reader's time, you can really steal a great deal of their time, or at least their mental energy to make sense of what you were doing.
Kate Mueller: [00:32:58] And it is such a lovely way to provide both good service, but to also respect your reader to say: Okay, how can I make this more concise? How can I make this more clear?—so that they can get in and get out as quickly as they need to. And I'm not sucking up any extra time that lets me send them back to the thing they were actually trying to do. They don't want to spend ten minutes in this doc trying to figure out what it means. They want to spend like 90 seconds in the doc so that they can go back and solve the problem they were actually trying to solve.
Sarah Walker: [00:33:33] Yeah. And it's in that concept of non-stealing of time where style guidelines come into play, because by having consistent application of, you know, say we format, we style button labels, dropdown menu labels, a certain way—you do that consistently, the reader understands, oh, it's that button. Oh, okay. That's that bold text. That means it's a button. That bold text corresponds to some UI element. It's ensuring through those guidelines that there is a consistent presentation of information that helps the reader understand it without having to stop and go: What did they mean here? What is this a reference to? I'm confused. That's for me where I think guidelines are so very useful, especially when you're on a writing team, that you can present consistent styling across docs so that as the reader moves from doc to doc—each one written by someone different—they know that every time they see a boldface word, it refers to a UI element. They see text that is in monotype: That's a code that's some sort of code bit. It's just breaking style guidelines around breaking down a doc into sections and subsections. That structuring guidance also helps readers move from doc to doc and consistently know: this subsection is a sub-idea of this concept with this major heading.
As I was explaining to someone just the other day, the reader may not consciously realize that is going on, but brains seek order out of chaos. They look for patterns. They are attuned to finding patterns and recognizing patterns. And when you can provide those patterns through text formatting, structure, naming conventions of headings, subheadings, titles, even—those are guideposts for the reader to take in information, process it, and be able to move on with their day. That is one of the aspects that I really love about technical writing: just being able to share the information that I have collected, that I have taken in and assimilated, and putting it out there for them in a way that helps them understand it and assimilate it and get on with their day. I started teaching yoga because it brought me such joy and I wanted to share that joy with other people. So that was a big reason why I became a yoga instructor. It brought such a different way of being. It brought joy. It sparked joy. And I had so much enthusiasm. I wanted to share that with other folks. I wanted to help folks discover the things that I had discovered about reconnecting with parts of my body. Of learning to accept the way parts of my body work. Not dwelling on the way that you know, “Oh, I wish oh wahhh…”. It's like, yeah, my hips are wide. They've got some funky things. It's largely genetics. I'm lucky I don't have both of my knees replaced at this point. And here are some poses that will help me keep my knees healthy and happy and also allow me to do other things. And that was such a revelation. And to be able to become an instructor and share that, and to see that same dawning on other people's faces as I was teaching. It was fantastic, just to see that joy reflected.
So as I'm writing and editing docs, I know that I will not get to see the readers’ reaction, but I can hope that the docs help the readers learn what they need to learn, do what they need to do, and get on with their day with less stress, with less tension, with less frustration. And isn't that a great way to live, I think? Especially nowadays, just to have some small part of your life be a little less stressful, be a little less frustrating, be a little less unknown. To have someone craft something for you to learn how to do the thing that you need to do. To learn it in a less stressful way, in an inviting way. To be able to take in that information, to assimilate it, to make it part of you, and then to apply it in your job and not feel frustrated. That means that you get to turn off or put your computer to sleep and go on to the next phase of your day with a little less stress, a little less frustration. It's a small thing, but maybe I'm making someone else's life a little bit better.
Kate Mueller: [00:40:17] That is, for me, 100% of what I most enjoy about doing the work as well: the idea that somebody comes to my documentation during a point of stress, right? They have a problem they need to solve. They have a question they need to answer, whatever that is. And through the experience of using my documentation, they leave with less stress than they arrived with. I don't ever get to see that, but that is a gift that I love giving to other people. I love the idea of giving it to other people. I love the reality of giving it to other people. It is just this phenomenal moment of feeling like, because I created this thing with care, someone else is going to have a slightly better day just because of that. It's a tiny thing. It's a small interaction. But think about if everything in our lives was structured with that level of care and how amazing the world would be.
Kate Mueller: [00:41:19] So, Sarah, this has been an absolutely wonderful conversation, and I want to kind of lead us into the wind down portion of the episode at this point. So one of my first kind of closing questions is, are there any resources that you think are helpful that you'd like us to share with the podcast audience? That doesn't have to be anything relating to stuff we've discussed. They could just be resources that have been helpful to you.
Sarah Walker: [00:41:45] One of the books that I will recommend to folks who I've worked with who have wanted to become better writers, I tell them to go read Stephen King's On Writing. That was one of the best books I read about editing. He had some practical advice for how to approach editing your own work, and how to learn to write in a way that that type of editing isn't quite as necessary. And it's also a really great book anyway; he combines stories, fiction, along with his experiences as a teacher of writing workshops. I will freely recommend that. And I apologize that I don't remember the exact name of the site as it exists now, but way back there was a site called Garbl's Guide to Fat Free Writing. If you Google that, you will find the site as it exists now. But he had some really amazing pages on commonly used phrases, commonly used words, and concise, clear alternatives. If you have a dime word, use a nickel word. Nickel word? Use a penny word. This long phrase? Here's a way to say it more concisely. And it goes to that point of Asteya. You know, if you have fewer words to write, you save time. If you present fewer words to read, you're respectful of your readers' time. And it has been a great resource.
Kate Mueller: [00:43:43] I actually used to use Stephen King's On Writing when I taught college-level freshmen composition, which in hindsight was a choice. But because he has a line really early in the text that writing is like telepathy, because you're getting someone else to think about the same thing you're thinking about. And I don't know why I thought this had a place in a freshmen composition classroom in required English 101. But that was where I often began my semesters. It was like: Okay, I know you're taking this class because it's required; however, writing is an amazing skill and I want to start with that and work out from it. And he really does have some good gems about it.
Sarah Walker: [00:44:34] That's a beautiful approach to writing, because so often it's taught as this laborious experience of putting words together that convey meaning. Whereas if you approach it as: You are a person telling a story to another person; sometimes that story is fiction, sometimes it's nonfiction, sometimes it's steps in a task. It's still a story. It's still a narrative. Use that telepathy. Oh that's beautiful. I love that.
Kate Mueller: [00:45:05] Yeah. I haven't revisited that book in years, so I may take your advice and go reread it myself. So thank you, Sarah, for reminding me it exists. And maybe along those lines, what is a great piece of advice that you've been given?
Sarah Walker: [00:45:21] As an instructor and as a student of yogasana. One of my mentors would say, “Remember, it's a practice, not a perfect.” And that applies not just to the asana practice, to pranayama, to breathwork, but it applies to people who are writers—especially of documentation—because you don't have to get it perfect. I know so many writers who are like, it's never going to be perfect. We will always find things to futz with. And, sometimes good enough is the practice. A lot of folks who are in a technical writing role, they’re around long enough that they help the docs evolve—as the product, the feature, the functionality—it evolves. The docs will evolve. Your practice evolves as you do it more. It expands. Sometimes it contracts. You go with the flow. You don't strive for perfection because perfection is pointless.
Kate Mueller: [00:46:42] Also often impossible.
Sarah Walker: [00:46:44] Yeah it is. Because something that you can consider perfect will be lacking in someone else's eyes. So just aim for clear, concise, actionable in your writing of documentation. Serve the reader. That's your practice. Let your docs grow. Let your writing grow.
Kate Mueller: [00:47:12] And by that same token, recognize that it's a practice for you and give yourself grace in that practice.
Sarah Walker: [00:47:21] Yes, grace. Self-compassion. As a writer, as a yoga student, you have to give yourself grace, because some days you're going to nail that headstand. Some days, it ain't happening and you accept it. You don't beat yourself up. You accept what is, and you flow from there. Some days you sit down at your computer to write something and it just ain't coming. The words aren't coming together right. The information, you realize you don't have it all. You can't get it quickly. And you have to remember, don't beat yourself up in that moment. Do what you can. Breathe. Flow. Move on with your day. There's always tomorrow. There's another opportunity to practice.
Kate Mueller: [00:48:19] I love this, Sarah. This is so good. Thank you. It's such a timely reminder for me because I've been struggling of late, so I personally really appreciate this piece of advice. And then maybe lastly, if folks who are listening want to follow you or get in touch, what are the ways that you would like them to do that?
Sarah Walker: [00:48:41] I am on Bluesky. I think it is @quesarahsera.bsky.social.
Kate Mueller: [00:48:47] We will link it in the show notes. Don't worry.
Sarah Walker: [00:48:50] Thank you. Or, you know, you can always get in touch with the folks at KnowledgeOwl. Ask them how to get in touch with the Raccoon Overlord Lady, and they could probably connect me that way.
Kate Mueller: [00:49:03] Yes. We are happy to serve as arbiters of access to the Raccoon Overlord Lady.
Sarah Walker: [00:49:11] Or ask the KnowledgeOwl folks to read the Raccoon Overlord doc.
Kate Mueller: [00:49:18] I'm actually going to see if we can get it posted publicly somewhere with your permission, because I feel like that would be a fantastic thing to link to from this episode particularly.
Sarah Walker: [00:49:28] That would be fun.
Kate Mueller: [00:49:29] Sarah, thank you so much for being so gracious with your time and so generous with your knowledge. This has been an absolutely delightful conversation, and I'm so excited that we get to share both the concept of the Raccoon Overlord Lady, but also tying these parallels between yoga and the technical writing realm with the whole world. So thank you.
Sarah Walker: [00:49:55] It's been an honor. I am grateful for the opportunity.
Kate Mueller: [00:50:04] The Not-Boring Tech Writer is co-produced by our podcast Head of Operations, Chad Timblin, and me.
Post-production is handled by the lovely humans at Astronomic Audio with editing by Dillon, transcription by Madi, and general post-production support by Been and Alex.
Our theme song is by Brightside Studio.
Our artwork is by Bill Netherlands.
You can order The Not-Boring Tech Writer t-shirts, stickers, mugs, and other merch from the Merch tab on thenotboringtechwriter.com.
You can check out KnowledgeOwl's products at knowledgeowl.com.
And if you want to work with me on docs, knowledge management coaching, or revamping an existing knowledge base, go to knowledgewithsass.com.
Until next time, I'm Kate Mueller, and you are the not-boring tech writer.