Communicado: Business Communications Blog

Improve your document and report writing with post-it notes

Posted by Andrew Jackson on Mar 19,2010 @ 02:30 PM

andrew jacksonYes, you did read that title correctly. And in case you think I've lost my marbles, I promise you I haven't! Ask anyone who has worked with me. If there's some complex document or report writing to be done, my wall gets covered with brightly coloured post-it notes.

'Why?' is a question you may well be asking? In previous posts, I've mentioned some of the benefits of and techniques for writing in a more structured way.

Using post-it notes is really about taking a structured approach to writing to the next level - the document level.

You see, each post-it note I use represents a chunk or module of content. I have a heading for each module written on the post-it note, so I know the approximate content it represents. I also use larger post-it notes to define topics (groups of related modules) and a different size again to define groups of related topics. These bigger sized notes also have headings written on them. I also find it useful to have different coloured post-its for each of these different levels of content.

Perhaps you are beginning to see that this seeming madness isn't quite so mad after all. If you are still bemused, let me explain a bit more. Using post-it notes allows me to experiment with a variety of structures and sequences for my content. I can move them around on my wall and consider several options for the structure and sequence before I've written a word. In other words, I get a birds-eye view of the content and different ways of organising it without being bogged down in the detail.

It's also a great way of getting some instant reviews or feedback from colleagues. Give them a first draft document with a request to review the structure and they have to read the whole thing before they can make an informed judgment. Get them to take a look at your post-it note outline on the spot, talk them through it briefly and they can give you some feedback in a matter of minutes.

Once I'm happy with an outline, I can easily capture the structure in a Word document and start filling in the detail. And I can write the content in any order I like. If I'm waiting for content for particular modules or topics from someone else, I can still go ahead and write the parts of the document where I have content already.

So next time you visit the stationery cupboard choose a few different sized post-it notes in different colours. Your colleagues may raise their eyebrows, but you can be confident you'll be raising your report writing game.

 

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Topics: Report Writing, Communication skills