Employees Appraisal with Balanced Scorecard from sales performance appraisal form , image source: www.bscdesigner.com
Each week brings files, emails, new jobs, and task lists. How much of that is different from the job you’ve done before? Odds are, not much. Many of our daily tasks are variations on something we’ve done countless times before.
Don’t reinvent the wheel every time you start something fresh. Instead, use templates–standardized documents as starting point for new work. Once you save a separate variant of the template add, remove, or alter any data for that unique record, and you’ll have the job done in a fraction of the time.
Templates work anywhere: in word processors, spreadsheets, project management apps, survey platforms, and also email. Here’s the way to use templates in your favorite programs –and the way to generate documents from a template–so you can get your tasks faster.
Templates take the time to build, and it’s easy to wonder if they’re worth the investment. The answer: absolutely. Editing a template takes much less time than formatting something. It’s the difference between retyping it, or copying and pasting some text.
That’s only one benefit: Using a template means you are not as inclined to leave out key information, too. For instance, if you need to send freelance authors a contributor agreement, changing a standard contract template (instead of writing a new contract each time) guarantees you won’t leave out that crucial clause about owning the content once you’ve paid for this.
Templates also guarantee consistency. Perhaps you send investors or customers regular job updates. Using a template, you know the update will have the formatting, layout, and arrangement.
How to Create Fantastic Templates
Not all templates are created equal–and a few things do not need a template. Listed below are a couple of guidelines to follow.
First, templates should be comprehensive. So err on the side of adding too rather than too small, it’s simpler to delete information than add it in.
Imagine you’re developing a template of your own resume. You’d want to record details about your responsibilities and achievements, so you’ll have.
You can delete less-important notes later on, but you might forget it at the last edition when it’s not from the template.
Some applications will automatically fill in these factors for you (more on that in a little ). But should you need to fill in the information on your own, include some text that’s obvious and simple to look for so it is possible to locate text that has to be altered without much effort.