Calories Tracker Spreadsheet Fit for Life from calorie counter spreadsheet , image source: www.fitforlife.me
Each week brings job lists, emails, files, and new projects. How much of this is completely different from the work you have done before? Odds are, maybe not much. Many of our tasks are variations on something.
Don’t reinvent the wheel each time you start something fresh. Use templates–as starting point for 17, standardized documents with formatting and text. Once you save another version of the template, just add, remove, or alter any info for that unique document, and you are going to have the job.
Templates work anywhere: in word processors, spreadsheets, project management programs, survey programs, and email. Here is the way to automatically generate documents from a template — and how to use templates in your favorite programs –so you can get your tasks faster.
Templates take the time to construct, and it’s easy to wonder whether they are worth the investment. The short answer: absolutely. Editing a template takes far less time than formatting something. It’s the distinction between retyping it, or copying and pasting some text.
That’s not the only benefit: Using a template means you are less likely to leave out crucial info, also. For instance, if you need to send freelance authors a contributor agreement, changing a standard contract template (rather than composing a new contract each time) ensures you won’t leave out the crucial clause regarding owning the content as soon as you’ve paid for it.
Templates also guarantee consistency. Maybe you send regular job updates to investors or clients. Using a template, you know the upgrade will have the same formatting, design, and standard structure.
How to Create Fantastic Templates
Not all templates are created equal–and some things don’t need a template. Listed below are a couple of guidelines to follow.
First, templates should be comprehensive. So err on the side of including too instead of too little, it’s simpler to delete info than add it in.
Imagine you are creating a template of your own resume. You’d want to list details and that means you are going to have all the information you need to submit an application for almost any job.
You can delete less-important notes later on, but if it’s not from the template you may forget it.
Some applications will automatically fill in these factors for you (more on that in a little ). But if you have to fill in the information by yourself, include some text that is obvious and simple to look for so it is possible to find text that has to be altered without a lot of effort.