The more you know, the less you know you know?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

John Posada wondered: <<Here I am 10 months later, having produced 
maybe close to a thousand pages of document, and have realized that the 
more I write, the smaller the dent on how much is left that I need to 
write.>>

Welcome to my world. One of the things I love most about scientific 
editing is that there's always more to learn, and each new mountain 
peak reveals a whole new range of peaks to scale behind it. Wouldn't 
trade that for the world. On the other hand, I don't have to document 
it all... my clients do that.

<<My problem is that at the rate I'm going, it will be five years 
before I've made a dent on documenting what I need to document.>>

Have you tried attacking the problem from the obverse side of the coin? 
That is, set a target date for each set of deliverables, then do 
triage: define what is essential and must be done if nothing else gets 
done, what should be done if I have time remaining, and what I can 
avoid doing at all (or delay to a future release without harming anyone 
much)? That focuses one's efforts most wonderfully.

Try that approach, and create a wish list of second-tier items that you 
will try to complete only after the key stuff is complete. For example, 
anything that users can figure out from the interface becomes a tier 2 
or tier 3 item, depending how obvious it is, whereas high-level stuff 
that users need to know before they can even begin trying to figure out 
the interface is always tier 1.

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Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com
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