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Each week brings documents, emails, new projects, and job lists. How much of that is completely different from the work you’ve done before? Odds are, maybe not much. Many of our tasks are variations on something we’ve done countless times before.
Do not reinvent the wheel each time you start something fresh. Use templates–standardized files with formatting and text as starting point for work. Once you save another variant of the template add, remove, or alter any data for that unique document, and you’ll have the work completed in a fraction of this time.
Programs work anywhere: in word processors, spreadsheets, project management programs, survey platforms, and email. Here’s the way to use templates and to generate documents from a template–so you can get your tasks done faster.
Templates take time to build, and it’s easy to wonder whether they’re worth the investment. The answer: absolutely. Editing a template takes far less time than formatting something from scratch. It’s the distinction between retyping it, or copying and pasting some text.
That’s only one advantage: Using a template means you are not as inclined to leave out key information, too. For instance, if you want to send freelance authors a contributor agreement, modifying a standard contract template (instead of writing a new contract each time) ensures you won’t depart out that crucial clause regarding possessing the content once you’ve paid for this.
Templates also guarantee consistency. Perhaps you send regular job updates to investors or customers. Using a template, you know the upgrade will constantly have the same formatting, design, and general structure.
How to Produce Fantastic Templates
Not many templates are created equal–and a few things do not require a template. Listed below are a few guidelines to follow.
First, templates must be comprehensive. It’s easier to delete info than add it in, so err on the side of including rather than too little.
Imagine you are creating a template of your resume. You would want to record facts about your duties and accomplishments, so you are going to have.
You can delete notes that are less-important later on, but you may forget it at the last 25, if it’s not in the template.
Some tools will automatically fill in all these factors for you (more on this in a little ). But if you have to fill in the data on your own, add some text that is obvious and simple to search for so it is possible to find text that needs to be altered without much work.