What Seth said, here.
In Proposal Land, put separate ideas in separate sentences or in an adjacent textbox. That includes anything beyond the main point you’re making:
Make embedded lists of stuff into bullets.
Use that period. Some of your ancestors didn’t have it.
Being off the field, I don’t know if anyone is using large language models (LLMs) to train so-called artificial-intelligence (AI) software on their own proposal portfolio/library, for the purpose of getting first drafts. It would seem like an obvious thing to try.
For how you might use an LLM to train writers or even (Gasp!) editors, here are three great ideas from someone who teaches scientific writing.
Look! Here’s Seth, writing about management reserve.
No, wait, that’s what we call it in Proposal Land. He calls it a ledge: one that will keep you from drowning. It’s a compelling metaphor.
The ledge is a combination of time and money.
It’s the buffer between here and disaster.
The ledge is a foundation, a place we can find our footing as we think about the next steps.
And the ledge offers perspective, because we can realize that even if this moment feels momentous, it might not be.
Stop, now, and go read the whole thing.
And on your next proposal, make sure you have a ledge. Heck, on your next project of any sort, make sure you have a ledge.
We’ve seen how other disciplines can help us in Proposal Land:
Now it’s time to learn something from a botanical garden that had stagnated for lack of big funding to fund its ambitious vision.
So because we couldn’t take
the big step we wanted to,
we didn’t take any step at all.
Here’s the short version of how a team of people unstuck that garden–but the whole post by Scientist Sees Squirrel is well worth reading, and the blog (Tagline: Seldom original. Often wrong. Occasionally interesting.) is well worth your time if you have even a passing interest in the life sciences.
My friends and I decided we’d rather do something small than be stagnant. So we started to develop a new Garden bed each year, but one that we could do for $5,000 with volunteer labour. We didn’t ask anyone . . . for $100,000, because we figured first we should be able to show that we could execute a $5,000 project successfully. And guess what? After 5 years, the Garden looked fresh, new people were coming and stalwarts were returning, and we were able to think a little bigger. Now after 10 years, we’ve quadrupled our staffing and budget, our City government sees the Garden as a major asset they want to invest in, and people are flooding through. All this because we weren’t afraid to do nothing much. (emphasis added)
Two key things here:
When our proposals are a hot mess (as they often seem to be), fixing all those interlocking processes can feel overwhelming. So don’t try. Get a small group of like-minded individuals together and fix something smaller, instead:
Don’t be afraid to do nothing much. Day after day, week after week, year after year, “nothing much” adds up to “quite something.”
PS The suggestions for improvement that don’t have links here are all addressed in The Manual. Just sayin.’
Running into a burning building is heroic work.
Keeping buildings from burning down in the first place
is actually just as important.
And it scales more reliably.
– Seth’s Blog
I’ve worked with firefighters and with fire inspectors on proposals: literally and metaphorically. Unless the damn place/proposal is on fire, I much prefer the inspectors. Seth’s right: prevention scales more reliably than recovery.
But when things *are* on fire despite our maybe less-than-best efforts, asking “why” in that moment is not only not helpful, it makes it harder to do the work that needs to be done.
If someone can’t help with the effort to extinguish the flames, they should shut up and sit down.
There’ll be lots of time later to do the forensic analysis.