I approach writing like I approach coding. First, I do a "breadth first" plan of what I'm going to write (i.e., I define the ToC for the doc, first). Then I go

I approach writing like I approach coding. First, I do a "breadth first" plan of what I'm going to write (i.e., I define the ToC for the doc, first). Then I go through the headers and just bang in a few quick-and-dirty bulletpoints under each heading -- and I do that all the way through the document. If it needs diagrams, I hand-draw them roughly, take a photo with my phone and copy-paste them in. Then I do a third pass where I come back, flesh out the bullet points into paragraphs, and spend some time in Excalidraw knocking out the diagrams. Finally, I do a fourth pass, to tidy up stuff. The benefit of this approach is that it allows you to compartmentalise the different cognitive requirements into phases. Phase 1: planning, Phase 2: idea capture, Phase 3: wordsmithing and diagramming, Phase 4: proofreading This approach works really well for me.