Write the Nerd Report

Did you know that I have nerd version of my Theory of Use post? It’s a 9,000+ word working paper filled with lots of citations and a bunch of technical gobbledegook. I did a readability check on it and it’s definitely college level (if not post-grad).

I have not shared it with anyone. I am not certain I will ever share it with anyone. The target audience for this one already knows it exists, because that audience is just me.

I’ve talked before about how there are two different types of reports. I’ve used different terms over time. In 2023 I wrote a post comparing the two versions as Documentation Reports and Presentation Reports. In my Broken Resource Theory post I call the reports we write while we work, Thinking Artifacts.

But lately I’ve just been calling them nerd reports.

Nerd Reports are NOT first drafts.

Writers often give the advice to just put everything down into a rough draft, then edit and revise later. You see it in Anne Lamott‘s shitty first drafts. You see it in Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch‘s murder your darlings. It’s good advice for any writer.

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

But nerd reports are not drafts. They are not just extra wordy versions of what you will ultimately share with your audience. Because if you try to treat them like first drafts, and just edit away all the nerdy stuff, you end up with something that doesn’t work as a nerd report or a presentation report.

So let the nerds be nerds. Don’t edit, adapt.

The Great Explainer, Misunderstood

Richard Feynman didn’t win a nobel prize because of how he explained things. The actual Nobel-cited work (the 1949 papers in Physical Review, “Space-Time Approach to Quantum Electrodynamics” and “The Theory of Positrons“) is dense, formal physics writing.

His reputation as a great explainer came from how he taught physics, and how he approached non-physicists. It was in his adaptations.

Feynman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I said to him, “Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.” Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, “I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it.” But he came back a few days later to say, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don’t really understand it.”

David L. Goodstein

The key point for us is to remember that even someone known widely as a great explainer, isn’t always explaining. He won his nobel because of his nerd papers. He won his reputation because of his explanations.

Step 1. Nerd Out. Step 2. Break it Down

Okay, back to reporting.

The first step is to let nerds be nerds. Whether that’s you, a colleague, a boss, a client, a consultant, or even an intern. Write as long as you/they want in whatever voice you/they want to use with whatever words come to mind.

The second step is to adapt (not revise) that nerd report into something for other people to read. Think of it like that TV and movie trope where the nerdy scientist or engineer just said a bunch of stuff then was asked to put it in Layman’s terms.

Because good communications isn’t about being easy to understand all the time. You just need to be easy to understand when it counts.