Memorial Service Announcement Orchids from memorial service invitations templates , image source: www.zazzle.com
Each week brings new jobs, emails, files, and job lists. How much of that is different from the job you have done before? Odds are, maybe not much. Many of our tasks are variations on something we’ve done hundreds of times before.
Don’t reinvent the wheel every time you start something new. Use templates–standardized documents as starting point for work. Once you save a version of the template add, eliminate, or change any info for that record, and you are going to have the new job.
Templates work anywhere: in word processors, spreadsheets, project management apps, survey platforms, and email. Here’s how to use templates in your favorite apps–and the way to automatically generate documents from a template–so it’s possible to get your tasks done quicker.
Templates take time to construct, 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’s the difference between retyping it, or copying and pasting some text.
That is only one benefit: Using a template means you are less inclined to leave out crucial information, too. For instance, if you need to send freelance authors a contributor agreement, modifying a standard contract template (instead of writing a new contract every time) guarantees you won’t leave out that crucial clause about owning the content once you’ve paid for it.
Templates also guarantee consistency. You send clients or investors regular project updates. With a template, you know the update will always have the same formatting, layout, and arrangement.
How to Produce Fantastic Templates
Not all templates are created equal–and a few things don’t need a template. Here are a few tips to follow.
First, templates should be comprehensive. It is more easy to delete info than add it , so err on the side of adding instead of too small.
Imagine you are developing a template of your resume. You would want to record in-depth facts about your responsibilities and achievements, and that means you are going to have.
You can delete notes on, but when it’s not in the template you may forget it at the last version.
Some tools will automatically fill in all these variables for you (more on that in a bit). But if you have to fill in the information by yourself, include some text that’s easy and obvious to look for so it is possible to locate text that has to be changed without much effort.