{"id":2527,"date":"2019-03-02T16:34:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-02T16:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mylessonslearned.co\/?p=2527"},"modified":"2019-03-02T16:34:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T16:34:54","slug":"how-to-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mylessonslearned.co\/?p=2527","title":{"rendered":"How to Update"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Someone mentioned to me that she was having a tough time providing project updates for a Program Management Office report. Often, updates are either mundane or too detailed. Here are some lessons learned:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Tell me what I need to know<\/strong>. Not every detail or every nuance, but for this update, what do I need to know&#8230;is there a problem?  Is everything fine?<\/li><li><strong>Review your updates in sequence<\/strong>: what did you say the previous months? Are there key milestones which needed to be met? Problems which were referred to in last month&#8217;s update?  If you line up all your updates, it should read as a coherent chronology of events&#8230;not disparate pieces of data.<\/li><li><strong>If you&#8217;re spending more than 20 minutes on it, you&#8217;re overthinking it<\/strong>. People will read your update in less than a minute so keep it in perspective. <\/li><li><strong>Read the update with fresh eyes<\/strong>. Is it clear&#8230;.especially to someone who isn&#8217;t in the details, but is pretty smart? Updates typically get circulated to wider audiences, so be clear and don&#8217;t assume. <\/li><li><strong>Well written updates are a test of editing more than knowledge<\/strong>.  Write, then edit&#8230;and edit again. Boil it down to the essentials: not one unnecessary word or fact. Only the essence of what&#8217;s important.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had a great English teacher senior year in high school.  Whenever we&#8217;d ask him how long a paper needed to be, he&#8217;d say &#8220;As long as a piece of string to tie up the package nicely.&#8221; We&#8217;d look at him blankly&#8230;.but 5 page papers and 60 page papers got As.  Length didn&#8217;t matter to him&#8230;only the quality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Someone mentioned to me that she was having a tough time providing project updates for a Program Management Office report. Often, updates are either mundane or too detailed. Here are some lessons learned: Tell me what I need to know. Not every detail or every nuance, but for this update, what do I need to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How to Update - My Lessons Learned<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mylessonslearned.co\/?p=2527\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Update - My Lessons Learned\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Someone mentioned to me that she was having a tough time providing project updates for a Program Management Office report. 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