Rob Ashton
When many people set out to write a report or proposal, they start with a standard template or adapt a previous document.
On the surface, this makes sense. After all, why waste time reinventing the wheel? Surely anything that reduces the effort of writing has to be a good thing?
Usually, yes, but not in this case. In fact, reducing effort in this way could mean you end up squandering all your hard work.
Here’s why.
When we repurpose what’s gone before, we treat writing as if it’s just a case of downloading data from one head (our own) and uploading it to another (the reader’s).
This problem stems from thinking that the human brain is a computer. The trouble is, it’s not.
How we really read
Bizarre as it may sound, you do want the recipient to have to work a little to read what you write. (Not too much though – that will almost certainly backfire.)
It all comes down to how our brains really read.
Reading is such an incredibly complex process that it’s only possible to do it at speed by taking shortcuts. And one of the best shortcuts of all is predicting what’s coming next as we process each sentence and paragraph.
Instead of focusing on every word, we pick out what’s different from what we predicted and use it to create a kind of error signal. Neuroscientists have discovered that it’s only that error signal that makes it through to the higher centres of the brain.
The trouble is that we need to recognise what we’re reading as different for that to happen. And this is where adapting old documents works against you. Because the more familiar something looks, the more the reader’s brain falls back on what it’s seen before and the less it thinks about what you’ve written this time.
Reading on autopilot
When you take last month’s report, update the stats, change the commentary and make a few other tweaks to bring it all up to date, that’s obviously going to be quicker than writing one from scratch.
But the person who opens it and sees a report that looks almost exactly like last month’s may well miss much of the new information in it.
Every section that has the same name as the equivalent one in the last five reports (‘Background’ or ‘Latest figures’, say) will tell their brain to take shortcuts.
Every paragraph, sentence or heading that they’ve seen before signals that it can stay on autopilot and not engage.
Lucid moments
Obviously the reader won’t ignore the document completely (assuming they open it). They just won’t read it properly. And the more familiar the content, the more their brain will check out.
That means that all those hours you spent sweating over a hot keyboard could well be for nothing.
Occasionally something will shake them out of this trance-like state (like the thought that they really should be concentrating) and they will read what’s actually in front of them.
But those intermittent, lucid moments will mean that they then take in only some of the information. And without the full picture, they may completely misinterpret what you wrote.
If you’ve ever had someone make a bizarre decision after reading one of your documents or emails, that may well be why.
A better way
This doesn’t mean you should avoid templates altogether; just that being aware of the risks can help you mitigate them. But there is a better way to write documents even if you do have to start from scratch. My colleague David Cameron explains how in this full (and free) report-writing playbook.
For more direct guidance from one of our experts, take a quick look at these training courses. Just drop a note in the chat if you need help.
Subscribe
Expert advice to your inbox
