Every week brings new projects, emails, documents, and task lists. How much of this is totally different from the job you’ve done before? Odds are, not much. Many of our day-to-day tasks are variations on something.
Don’t reinvent the wheel each single time you start something fresh. Use templates–standardized files with text and formatting as starting point for new work. Once you save another version of the template, simply add, remove, or change any info for that document, and you are going to have the job.
Programs work everywhere: in word processors, spreadsheets, project management programs, survey programs, and also email. Here’s the way to use templates and the way to automatically create documents from a template–so it’s possible to get your ordinary tasks quicker.
Programs take 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 some thing. It’s the difference between retyping it, or copying and pasting some text.
That’s only one benefit: Using a template means you’re not as likely to leave out key information, too. By way of instance, if you need to send freelance writers a contributor arrangement, modifying a standard contract template (rather than composing a new contract each time) ensures you won’t depart out the crucial clause regarding owning the content as soon as you’ve paid for this.
Templates additionally guarantee consistency. Perhaps you send investors or customers regular project updates. Using a template, you know the upgrade will have the formatting, layout, and general structure.
Imagine you are creating a template of your own resume. You’d want to list facts about your duties and accomplishments, and that means you’ll have all the information you need to submit an application for any job.
Some applications will automatically fill in all these variables for you (more on this in a little ). But if you need to fill in the data on your own, add some text that is obvious and simple to search for so you can find.