I found myself, often, avoiding the report and doing something else. Regardless of whatever reason I could come up with I knew it was a psychological reason I was not accomplishing this task. Rarely, if ever was there a concrete reason for holding off writing.
The trick I discovered was when I thought, "maybe I don't want to do it because it feels large and imposing. It feels like I couldn't accomplish it and so I don't even want to start". Thats when I started to break the task down...and down...and so far down that no person in the world could say "I can't do that".
So the last on my to-do list would simply say something like:
- Write <CLIENT> report
Anxiety/procrastination sets in, so I break it down:
- Write <CLIENT> report
- Write executive summary
- Write narrative
- Write findings
Nope, still got that procrastination, lets take it to the extreme:
- Write <CLIENT> report
- open the file
- change filename, dates and title
- Write executive summary
- summarize important findings
- etc
- Write narrative
- start with explaining pentest network position
- write recon perspective and returned ports/OSs
- start writing chronologically the attack timeline
- etc
- Write findings
- Write findings you remember from your notes
- Gather screenshots/evidence from logs
- Select the finding templates or make your own
- etc
- Send report to QA
Breaking it out this far helped my brain to feel that no matter how big this project is, all I had to do was focus on the singular next piece. No matter how much I wanted to procrastinate, I could at least open the file, I could at least change the dates.
Starting, I found, is the most important step. Motivation to complete something arises AFTER starting that something.
Good luck in life, I hope this technique can help you too.
PS.
This is a general technique, applicable to anything from pentest reports to woodwork projects to picking investments, apply liberally, rinse and repeat.
