Half of what you're asked to document isn't a docs problem

Someone drops a message in your channel: "can we get an article on why the export button is greyed out?"

You could write that article. It would take an hour, it would be accurate, and it would be read by everybody who hits the greyed-out button and goes looking for an explanation.

Or someone could add three words of hover text to the button.

Writing the article is the cheapest thing for everyone except you

When something in a product is confusing, asking for documentation is the path of least resistance. It costs the person asking nothing, it doesn't require a sprint, and it feels like a solution.

The awkward part is that the article usually works, a bit. Enough that nobody revisits the underlying problem. So you've taken on a page to maintain forever in exchange for a fix that never happened, and the button is still greyed out with no explanation.

Sort the queue before you write from it

Most requests land in one of these, and naming which one is faster than drafting.

A real docs problem. The information genuinely can't live anywhere else. Write it.

A UI problem. People are confused because the interface is unclear. An article hides the evidence. Say what you'd change instead.

Onboarding. Needed once, at the start, never looked up again. That belongs in a first-run flow or an email, not in your help center where it will sit and go stale.

In-product text. It belongs in a tooltip, a field description or an error message. Write the sentence and hand it to whoever owns the screen.

Already answered. You have an article. The real problem is that nobody can find it, which is a naming or structure problem wearing a costume.

Shouldn't exist. The need disappears if something small changes. Worth saying out loud even when it isn't your call.

This is a more useful thing to bring to a product manager

"We get a lot of questions about this" is easy to nod at and ignore. "Forty per cent of last quarter's documentation requests were about one screen, and here they are" is a different conversation, and it's one you're uniquely placed to have, because nobody else sees the whole list.

You don't need permission to sort your own backlog. You just need to stop treating it as a to-write list.

Our free prompt for exactly this takes your list of requests and sorts them into those groups, with a line of reasoning each. Run it on last quarter's and see what the split actually is.