Podcast: Tech writing and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, with Dan Grabski

Summary: In this episode, I chat with Dan Grabski, a senior content developer based in Portland, both about his recent WTD talk titled 'Zen and the Art of Manually Creating API Documentation' and Robert Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.' Dan explains the importance of focusing not just on technical details of implementations but also on integrating the people side — on understanding the perspectives of different users and stakeholders involved. Dan provides examples from his engineering background to illustrate how intuition develops from experience, how to avoid spectator mode through hands-on exploration of APIs, on carving out time to devote to continual learning, and the value of incremental progress. Overall, it's a great conversation about engaging more deeply with technology to write better documentation.