How to increase your writing productivity with cheat sheets
Time is money. The pressure is always on to get more done in less time.
Companies spend a lot of money purchasing the tools to help writers produce more. Yet did you know that one of the best tools for improving production is one of the least known…and costs nothing to create?
By using features most people don’t even think about, you can take a set of tools (for example, FrameMaker, Excel, and PowerPoint) and create a set of materials, or cheat sheets, that enable you to track some initial metrics, build up reports, and track content in ways that the tool vendors never dreamed of. There are a dozen easy shortcuts (or more) that you can use with any toolset (even free ones like Google Docs), to simplify the work you do every day.
As a long-time technical communicator and founder of Publishing Smarter, Bernard Aschwanden has helped companies develop these tools to improve production. He’ll be our speaker at this month’s STC Houston program meeting, where he’ll be sharing that information with us.
Here are the details:
- Time: 5:30 p.m. for networking, 6:30 p.m. for the program
- Date: Tuesday, November 11
- Place: American Red Cross, 2700 SW. freeway
- Cost: $15 for members, $25 for nonmembers, free for students (with student ID)
Learning how to create cheat sheets is one reason, but not the only one, to attend Tuesday’s meeting. It is membership renewal time, and as STC’s vice president, Bernard is in a position to share the latest from the leadership’s point of view. For those of you who want to learn what STC is all about, this is the perfect opportunity to check things out.
We look forward to seeing you there!
