The Five Minute journal that made Tim Ferriss happier from five minute journal template , image source: thehustle.co
Each week brings new jobs, emails, documents, and job lists. How much of this is completely different from the work you’ve done? Odds are, maybe not much. A number of our tasks are variants on something we’ve done countless times before.
Don’t reinvent the wheel each single time you start something new. Rather, use templates–as starting point for work that is , standardized files with formatting and text. As soon as you save a variant of the template add, eliminate, or alter any data for that exceptional record, and you’ll have the job done in a fraction of this time.
Templates work everywhere: in word processors, spreadsheets, project management apps, survey programs, and also email. Here’s to automatically generate documents from a template — and the way to use templates from your favorite apps –so it’s possible to get your common tasks faster.
Programs take time to construct, and it’s easy to wonder if they are worth the investment. The answer: absolutely. Editing a template requires much less time than formatting something. It is the difference between copying and pasting some text, or retyping it.
That’s only one advantage: Using a template means you are less inclined to leave out key information, too. For instance, if you want to send freelance authors a contributor agreement, changing a standard contract template (rather than writing a new contract every time) guarantees you won’t leave out that crucial clause regarding possessing the content as soon as you’ve paid for this.
Templates also guarantee consistency. You send regular project updates to customers or investors. Using a template, you know the upgrade will have the formatting, design, and structure.
How to Create Great Templates
Not many templates are created equal–and some things do not need a template. Here are a couple of guidelines to follow.
First, templates must be comprehensive. So err on the side of including too rather than too small, it’s more easy to delete info than add it in.
Imagine you are developing a template of your own resume. You would want to list details and that means you are going to have all the info you need to apply for almost any job.
You can always delete less-important notes later on, but you may forget it in the final 25, when it is not from the template.
Some tools will automatically fill in all these factors for you (more on this in a little ). But should you have to fill in the information on your own, add some text that is simple and obvious to search for so it is possible to find.