yesterday's final draft is your template for today's task

My organization has a quarterly performance/bonus review. Previously I was making unorganized notes for myself when I received praise or did something extra at work. I had the idea to use the review form as a template. Today I helped someone senior to me and felt the effort and results were worth capturing. After reviewing the categories, one of them jumped out as the place where I could record this. Because the event was so fresh in my mind I was able to tailor my accomplishment for the category and the record will be there when performance reviews roll around. Plus, I won't have to try to remember how or why something was important to put it in context later. As a broader lesson, when you have a recurring task, consider using the final version as a template for gathering future information. It cuts out much of the formatting and processing and reduces the total effort required. People will think you are super productive when you can produce such polished reports at a moment’s notice.

check you have the right template before applying it

I was trying to use a spreadsheet template for a process and kept failing. Finally I started the process from scratch and succeeded. Templates are great. But before you use a template, make sure it fits the intended task. Sometimes you will spend more time in total by applying the wrong template first instead of creating something from scratch. Do a quick check first to ensure your template fits your task. This reminds me of the saying - think before you act.

templates increase results with fewer inputs

I give many presentations. Much of the content is redundant. I’ve created templates to cover various business requirements. Add or remove modular templates to quickly construct a full presentation based on current needs. Using this approach you can decrease your preparation time and the risk of errors. This strategy can also be applied to questions that you receive frequently. For presentations you can keep unused templates in the backup to address any questions. You will appear far more prepared without a significant increase in effort.

Make a template your 20% input

Create templates. Creating a time entry template saved me not only time in entry, but also a notable amount of cognitive strain involved in counting hours on a 24-hr clock and matching against an associated activity tracker. The template took care of counting, time per day, total hours, manual entry in web fields, and start and end times. The template eliminated more than 80% of the steps in the process and the steps eliminated were the most time consuming and cognitively challenging.