This is an internal memo that someone has disclosed to the public. Oh, it was me. Damn.

Hey team,

I’m on a crusade to reduce the number of meetings at Uscreen. Not only for my own calendar but for the whole team. It’s not an easy task!

I know each of you cares about the number of slots taken in your calendar. Especially about those slots that break your day in half. It sucks!

So instead, start writing things. Even if you feel you are not good at writing. Please, start doing it. No one is great at writing, or else we all would be copywriters.

I’m in the same boat as you. I have a deep aversion to half of my writing. I burn the other half even before anyone sees it. So don’t worry! Instead, start writing.

I want to share a few tricks that will help you.

General Tricks

Keep it simple. Keep readability at a grade 5-6 level when you can. You can check the Hemingway Editor for this. Be mindful of the audience. If you and I are the only engineers in the room, try to explain without too much professional jargon.

Mix long and short sentences. It will give your copy some fine-sounding rhythm.

Feel yourself as a content creator. Keep engagement up. You don’t want to lose your audience by assuming that they must read your extravaganza from A to Z.

Slack Tricks

I confront my own bad habits in Slack on a daily basis. The things below are my own ideal state.

No cliffhangers. A lot of people are trying to keep Slack communication like it’s a real-time chat. This is wrong for public channels. You can still write single-line blurbs in DMs if your colleague is not annoyed by this. BUT in public, always try to fight your instinct to react right away with a short one-liner. Write down a full message and allow the conversation to progress at readable pace.

Avoid DMs. Direct messages are there for confidentiality. Redirect people to public channels as well. This is a team effort!

Create fewer channels. Too many Slack channels make it tough to manage them. It also complicates deciding where to place things and where to find them.

Use threads. If you have a new topic from the discussion, move it to a new thread.

Note for project owners: If you see a great discussion about your project in Slack. Move the summary of this discussion with decisions into Linear. Long-memory optimization.

Document Tricks

Every document we are writing should not be longer than two pages. Do you have more than this? There’s a big chance that you are writing a specification instead of a document.

The document should have a clear purpose. Should answer a limited number of questions. Expect your readers to understand things without a deep dive. Include links to other places with more details as an optional choice for your reader.

Important! Don’t replace documents with slides. You can add slides for your TED talk on top, but always lead to a short and crisp document.

AI Tricks

You can use AI tools to enhance your writing speed. Experts (this is how I call myself) recommend investing more in writing without AI. But a little help isn’t a bad idea for efficiency.

Use voice input. Prompt to structure thoughts.

AI is a huge help in structuring unstructured thoughts. AI is helpful for spinning up drafts. But please! Don’t use AI to replace your original ideas.

Well!

This is a good start. I’m 100% sure I will expand this memo as I learn more things. If I delete something, I will also cross it out here with an explanation of why it was stupid.

Anyhow, I’m excited to read from you more!