For Love of Templates

I found myself in a bit of a bind this past week. I needed a lot of material from a lot of senior people in the company, and everyone was working on a variety of projects and priorities so it was hard for them to deliver anything to me quickly. This got me thinking about templates, especially when I talked with my VP of Comms about it last night.

Fear of a Blank Page

It’s amazing how daunting a completely blank page can be when being asked to gather up information. That’s the specific scenario my people found themselves in. We don’t have a very solid format for the material we’re collecting, and thus, it requires people to look at a blank page and think about what will be useful.

It doesn’t have to be that way. I just hadn’t thought of it yet.

Next time, I’ll copy/paste a template that gives them the skeleton of the information that I need, so that they can start there, and edit at will. Templates help.

Save Your Brain with Templates

For a billion years, I’ve used the same frame to write my typical posts and letters, like this one:

• Catchy title
• Striking visual
• First paragraph to set the stage
• First subheading to get people going
• Three or so points made in support of the theme (no more)
• Finish strong

Go back and reread most everything I’ve written for you here and you’ll see it. I’ve used the same one for ages. Why? Because it works. Because you respond to it. Because your compliments suggest that it’s a way for you to learn.

You can write templates for so many purposes:

• When interviewing a customer, be sure to ask these kinds of questions
• Packing list for trips (just checked every box on mine for this flight I’m taking today - SFO here I come!)
• The boss probably wants to know this, this, and this
• Before I finish the day…
• Don’t leave this meeting without

Those are just some examples. I bet you’ve got some other templates in mind.

Humans are Weird

We all KNOW that a template helps us not have to keep thoughts in “active memory,” but for whatever reason, we tend to resist them. “This is easy. I won’t forget.” And then you use a whole lot of active memory to do something you could easily delegate to your template and go on with your day with all kinds of extra energy available for creative thought.

You can put together templates and access them easily. Use any note taking app. I use Obsidian. You can use Evernote or OneNote or Google Keep or whatever. The tech doesn’t matter. You could keep a notepad full of templates.

Start Anywhere

That’s the other thing: just make a template today that you plan to re-use. Do it for anything. Your gym checklist. Your “small talk that’s not about weather” list. You can make templates to guide all kinds of aspects of your life. “Remember to ___.”

Where will you start? Do you have any existing templates? What do they look like? What’s on them?

Chris…