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Each week brings new jobs, emails, files, and job lists. Just how much of that is totally different from the job you have done before? Odds are, maybe not much. A number of our daily tasks are variations on something we’ve done hundreds of times before.
Don’t reinvent the wheel each time you start something fresh. Instead, use templates–as starting point for work that is , standardized files with formatting and text. Once you save another variant of the template, simply add, remove, or alter any data for that record that is unique, and you are going to have the job completed in a fraction of this time.
Templates work everywhere: in word processors, spreadsheets, project management apps, survey programs, and also email. Here’s the way to use templates and the way to generate documents from a template–so it’s possible to get your ordinary tasks faster.
Programs take the time to build, and it’s easy to wonder if they are worth the investment. The short answer: absolutely. Editing a template takes much less time than formatting something from scratch. It is the difference between copying and pasting some text, or retyping it.
That is not the only benefit: Using a template means you’re less inclined to leave out key info, too. By way of instance, if you need to send freelance authors a contributor agreement, modifying a standard contract template (rather than composing a new contract every time) ensures you won’t leave out that crucial clause regarding possessing the content once you’ve paid for this.
Templates also guarantee consistency. You send investors or customers regular job updates. Using a template, you know the update will always have the formatting, design, and arrangement.
How to Create Great Templates
Not many templates are created equal–and a few things don’t need a template. Here are a couple of tips to follow.
First, templates should be comprehensive. So err on the side of adding instead of too small, it’s easier to delete information than add it .
Imagine you’re developing a template of your resume. You’d want to record in-depth details about your responsibilities and achievements, so you are going to have.
You can delete notes later on, but when it is not in the template you may forget it.
Some applications will automatically fill in these variables for you (more on that in a bit). But should you need to fill in the data by yourself, add some text that’s simple and obvious to search for so it is possible to find text that needs to be changed without a lot of work.