Collect Your Information

I know it’s happened to you. You’ve bought something that needs assembling: a swing set or a ceiling fan or a bookcase. An hour’s work, tops. But the instructions are badly written, so you don’t read them all. Instead you just start working. Soon you discover that you need a tool or part that you don’t have, so work stops while you make a trip to a hardware store. An hour later you’re back on the job, and it happens again. Again you stop work to go buy what you need. The one-hour job stretches into three or four.

I know it’s happened to you because it’s happened to me. And it happens to most of us when we write. We jump into writing memos and letters without making sure that we have the materials—the information—that we need. So we keep interrupting our writing to find that information. As a result, the job takes longer and the writing is less effective. We need to learn to get our stuff together before we start.

The information for a piece of writing can come from two places: outside your mind, the stuff you don’t know yet; and inside your mind, the stuff you already know. The outside information can come from other people or from written sources. For information from other people, learn good interviewing techniques. Especially, follow the advice of Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus in their book Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge: “Successful leaders, we have found, are great askers, and they do pay attention.”

To be a “great asker,” learn to ask “W and H” questions, not “yes-no” questions: ask questions that begin with Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. And then pay attention to the answers; don’t be so busy thinking of your next question that you don’t listen to the information you’re getting.

For information from written sources, learn to be a good user of libraries and other databases. An excellent book on finding such information is Alden Todd’s Finding Facts Fast, published by Ten Speed Press.

Build an efficient personal library; keep close to your desk the books and files you find yourself consulting often. The books might include a dictionary, a one-volume encyclopedia, an atlas, an almanac, and the specialized reference books of your business or profession. More and more reference books, of course, are available in computer-readable form, on disk or on CD-ROM.

Also post prominently at your desk the phone number of the reference department of your local public or university library. Reference librarians can supply a great amount of information for free, over the phone.

Other information is inside your mind, facts you already know. It’s still important to get this information together early in the writing process. Again, ask the basic “W and H” questions and jot down your answers. Also ask the following four pairs of questions about the subject of your memo, letter, or report:

• How is my subject like others? How is it different from others?

• Of what larger whole is my subject a part? Into what parts can my subject be divided?

• In what time or times does my subject exist? In what space or spaces?

• What is the cause or causes of my subject? What is the effect or effects?

But whatever means you use, get your stuff together before you start drafting. Then your one-hour assembly job can be done in an hour, with much more effective results.

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