Introducing ... Templates by Paul
A set of google doc templates to save you time
Are you drowning in DMs? Consistently missing lunch? Blocking half-a-dozen people? It might be time to …
Docs are your life boat. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.
The better you and your organization can get at writing clear docs and establishing clear commenting practices the more you’ll find yourself eating sit-down lunch and genuinely appreciating your co-workers. Docs are the answer.
The problem: cold starts
Making a doc feels harder than just responding in the thread, or scheduling a meeting.
No thank you - I’d rather suffer later than focus now.
Templates as the solution
A few years ago I started compiling a library of doc templates that I use regularly.
I started using it personally and it made me not only more productive, but substantially more likely to document things.
Then, a few years ago, I rolled it out to everyone at Keeper (using the Google Doc template library function).
Within months, I saw:
A lot more good docs getting shared (by every function, not just leaders & PM)
Fewer meetings - I started having time for lunch again
Most meetings had pre-reads that attendees actually pre-read
Shorter meetings - a lot less context-based monologues
Much fewer 10+ comment slack threads
My favorite part of every day quickly became the ~60 minutes I’d spend reading other people’s docs and leaving comments using the #fyi framework.
Even my psychology changed - from constantly feeling behind and annoyed, to feeling in control and aligned.
Introducing … Templates By Paul
Each template is annotated with best practices. I’ve found this especially useful for onboarding new reports.
“Hey, this is a type 2 so can you put together a decision doc?”
The templates themselves are fairly bare-bones. I’ve tried to show rather than tell by using toy examples and placeholder text.
Templates by Paul is designed to be an evergreen resource - I’ll keep adding new templates and updating old ones as my perspectives change.
Thanks!