It can be easy in an engineering environment to become focused by the day-to-day tasks and lose sight of the big picture. Likely, many of us have heard the story about the three workers who had varying degrees of understanding about where their work fit in the scheme of things, the one with the best vision saying, “I’m helping to build a beautiful cathedral.”

If I’m thinking shortsightedly, I’ll say, “I’m documenting this procedure” or “I’m putting together an FAQ.”

But what am I really doing?

Contributing to a positive user experience, I hope.

But is there more?

I think even the story about the cathedral falls a little short because a cathedral in and of itself is just something nice to look at. The worker with the most vision would say, “I’m giving people a place to gather and worship according to their beliefs.”

Technical communicators can be one of the few placed where we can have a real vision about the projects we work on. Especially if there is only one working on a product, as I do at work, that is an opportunity to grasp the big picture. Questions we should be asking—such as “What are the users doing with this product?” and “How is this product going to make people’s lives better?”—can contribute to our understanding of what impact the product actually has on individuals and groups.

I think this kind of vision helps with job satisfaction. If I can’t see beyond today, if I let today’s challenges capture all my attention, then my work tends to feel tedious. But if I look at the big picture of what I’m contributing to, then what I’m doing is of more value to me. For example, lately I’ve been working on some video tutorials for a certain group of over 100 people who will be stepping into new responsibilities in two weeks. I can become shortsighted and say, “I’m making some videos.” But if I look at the big picture, I’m helping someone save hours that would be needed to train these people in person, and I’m helping this new group learn some logistical tasks faster so they can focus on their most important work. That’s the vision for this particular project. Every project should have one—and it probably doesn’t take much asking to find out what it is.

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Working on Multiple Projects: Positives and Negatives

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