Quiet Work, High Stakes (#11)

On urgency, invisibility, and the work that holds everything together

I don’t like reading documentation.

I skim. I search for keywords. I let AI summarize it for me. If I’m paying for support, I open a ticket instead. I do all the things a good technical writer isn’t supposed to admit.

This is not a piece with five quick wins. It’s not a checklist. It’s an orientation for anyone who’s ever wondered why this work matters, even when it goes unread.

But here’s the punchline: I still write documentation every week for teams who insist their users will read it. Some users do engage with the content when it’s first published. More often, though, they refer to it only when something breaks — or when sales engineers need to sound like they understand OAuth.

Most people don’t seek out documentation. They hope they’ll never need it. But when the demo freezes, the dashboard errors, or the question goes beyond what the chatbot can handle, the documentation suddenly matters.

Documentation doesn’t launch with fanfare. It doesn’t drive conversions or headline a roadmap.

But when something breaks, it’s the fallback. It's the quiet system someone hopes was prepared in advance, ready to carry the weight when nothing else can.

We tend to overlook what’s been prepared in advance, until we’re the ones depending on it.

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The Oil They Forgot to Bring

There’s a parable in the Gospel of Matthew.

Ten virgins go out to meet the bridegroom, each carrying a lamp. Five are wise. They bring extra oil. Five are foolish. They bring only what’s in the lamp.

The bridegroom is delayed. At midnight, a cry goes out: “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” The wise trim their lamps. The foolish realize theirs are going out. They ask to borrow oil, but there isn’t enough to share. So they leave to buy more.

While they’re gone, the bridegroom arrives. The door is shut. By the time the others return and ask to be let in, it’s too late.

It’s not a story about effort. It’s a story about preparation, about having the foresight to be ready before the moment arrives.

Many of us treat documentation the way the foolish virgins treated a backup oil supply. We believe that things will go smoothly. Inevitably, something breaks: the dashboard errors out, a client asks a tough question mid-demo, the chatbot fails.

In that moment, documentation becomes essential.

It's neither flashy nor central. It's just complete, quietly doing its job when everything else falters.