When people start to use Word, they tend to do more work than they need to. Many years ago, I applied the “principle of constructive laziness” to computers. Put simply, this means, never do anything more than once if you can get the computer to do it for you the second time.
Introduction
Computers have the potential to increase your productivity, but they are not smart enough to do this without you. The secret of increasing your productivity with your computer is changing the way that you work to take advantage of the strengths of the computer. In particular, this means using the computer to reduce the time spent on the same repetitive tasks.
When people start to use Microsoft Office Word, they tend to do more work than they need to. Robert Heinlein in his book “Time Enough for Love” described the “principle of constructive laziness”. It suggests that a little time spent thinking how to work differently can save you a lot of work in the longer term Many years ago, I applied the “principle of constructive laziness” to computers. Put simply, this means, never do anything more than once if you can get the computer to do it for you the second time. In Word, this often means using templates to save you producing the same standard documents again and again.
Don’t start with other people’s templates
Microsoft Word comes supplied with a range of standard templates. You can download more from Microsoft, but you will much better if you design your own. Instead of starting with a set of predefined templates, start by thinking about your work and what you spend your time doing. Try and answer the following questions:
1. What are the things that I do most often?
2. What documents do I produce most often?
3. How much of those documents is the same in each document?
If you have been using Word for a while then the answers to these question will be right there on your computer. Look at the Word documents stored on your computer, and this provides a record of what you do and the documents produced. Most people have letters, many will have invoices, and then they are usually documents related to the nature of your business, for example, as a writer, I have lots of articles, some books and quite a few reports.
Now look at the documents themselves.
Documents and their common features
Letters are likely to have a common structure: Your address at the top; the date; their address next, a greeting, the body of the letter, and then a closing salutation. Only the body of the letter and their address is likely to change. By using a standard letter form you will save yourself a lot of time. You can save money directly by storing your own letterhead in a template with the other common features and using plain paper. And if you think the template feature is too complicated in Word, just use a standard Word document and replace the addressee details and body of the letter each time using copy and paste.
An invoice is simply a special form of standard letter. The text body is your invoice information, and you can probably standardize more of this according to your invoice format.
For other documents that you produce a lot, you may usefully define a template. For example, as a Brighthub writer I prepare all my documents in Word first. This allows me to check spelling, word count and so on. A simple template ensures that I include all the required elements such as key words and search terms as well as saving me some typing time.
Look at the documents you already have to find those document types that occur again and again and design your own templates to save you time.
Note that templates do not apply only to Microsoft Word. In this article, How to CreateFree Flyers with Microsoft PowerPoint, the concept of using templates is also applied.
Templates in Word
This series deals with how templates can improve productivity in a small or home office environment. It describes how to move away from predefined templates and focus upon your own situation. It shows how you can improve quality at the same time as productivity
