Action Templates: Unlock Your Extra Potential And Productivity

Action templates can take you to the next level. Akin to routines in non-routine tasks and projects. Saved time, money, decision fatigue, and mental effort. Reduced stress, error rate, anxiety, and confusion. How’s that value proposition? Use action templates and experience it firsthand.

Routines But Not Really

Do you have a set of actions you take periodically—twice a week, weekly, monthly—or per project—research for article, interviews to hire, writing and recording video scripts—that are somewhat repetitive? Grocery shopping, meal prep, exercise, product outlines, dressing, brainstorming, project management, and meetings are prime examples. Yes? Great!

Say you’re Grant. 27 years of age. Office worker. Sedentary job, but Grant does work out and eat healthy, homecooked meals. Shops once a week. Writes a grocery list beforehand. Preps and eats essentially the same things week-to-week. Grant’s grocery and meal habit could use an update—an action template.

Make Him Smarter!

Mind you, Grant is smart. Jotting grocery lists prior to hitting the supermarket saves time and money. Without a clear-cut list, you forget things, throw unnecessary cookie sachets in, and you’re both getting poorer and fatter, and wasting precious time and decision points. Plus, Grant exercises and packs his food for work to keep his youthful engine roaring now as it did ten years ago.

Grant’s action templates could be: (1) a static grocery list he does not have to rewrite, (2) a step-by-step to his meal prep to do it faster and more consistently, (3) a structured exercise regimen, (4) a handful of weekly menus to pick from to remain healthy but less of a fucking bore. The 27-year old needs to use his imagination. His day job might have brainless work and Excel arithmetic which may be sped up. His emails and phone calls could benefit from scripts and batches to get through them quicker. Sky’s the limit.

Brain Limits

Point is, action templates are applicable to anything. Don’t underestimate the resources and brainpower this stratagem wins. Decision fatigue is real. Cognitive load is too. Your fat neuron mush can only handle so much. Pre-decide, even if the decisions seem self-evident. Self-evident bullshit like what to wear, eat, and buy, in what sequence to cook, shop, fill spreadsheets, research, and edit videos, and when, where, and how to do those things wears you down. Neurons are fucking precious!

Integrate action templates into work, and they pay. Businesses already use them—if you’re employed in a larger firm, you’re given a clear how-to for your operations. Medium-small businesses can and should use templates too. Individual workers, freelancers, and artists are no exception. A bit of forethought and effort to sketch out templates can earn you thousands of dollars and safeguard those nights from pounding headaches and anxiety. Worth it, y’think?

Designer Example

How you go about doing this depends on your industry and position. A webpage UX/UI designer could have a sequential plan for dealing with new clients: (1) conduct target userbase research to identify pain points, needs, goals, and behaviors, (2) develop user personas based on the client’s target customer, (3) build wireframes and prototypes that function; (4) inquire client for color palettes and layouts and styles of interactive elements, (5) integrate the visually appealing design into the previously built wireframe for a full product, (6) present it to the client and if no issues are present, (7) get paid.

Now that could be printed on a sheet on paper for use. Or, the designer can take it up a notch and detail each step to their personal preference and needs. Developing user personas isn’t exactly concrete, and as many characteristics as the professional sees fit may be introduced. There are no rules.

Works Everywhere!

A solo content creator could do this for their podcast (simplified): (1) double-check recording settings, (2) ensure guest is ready, (3) start the recording, (4) perform periodic checks on video and audio, (5) finish recording and care for the guest, (6) edit the audio and video, (7) upload the episode and clips. Each step could have steps with steps of their own.

Solopreneurs and small business owners could help their teams or themselves via templates. Your employees need direction and structure. You need concrete items to tick off, not abstract hints at goals. A gold standard is a sales template: (1) determine how much we need to increase sales for our less popular product, (2) choose a marketing strategy (ads, posters, newsletter, etc.) that best fits the product and marketing budget, (3) set a timeline for this to be achieved, (4) launch marketing campaign, (5) reiterate based on results from ads until sales goal is achieved.

Do It Yourself

Another classic example of an action template for business is a simple goals and KPIs sheet: (1) reach 15 percent growth in new customers in the next quarter (KPI or key performance indicator), (2) achieve this by implementing loyalty programs and improved customer service (strategy), (3) customer acquisition and retention (the goal itself). Short answer: yes, it is applicable to business, large and small.

Ironically, I have an action template for creating an action template. Tips. First and foremost, define the main objective of this action template (I.e. sales increase, meal prep efficiency, grocery shopping consistency, content creation quality, particular service or product improvement, correction of work processes and standard operating procedures, etc.). You can’t know what to do if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve.

Steps To Steps To Steps…

Step two is the creation of steps. What must you do to accomplish the objective (-s)? What could be a key performance indicator (KPI)? Grant’s static grocery list ended here. Meal prep efficiency as the objective, the steps could include: (1) gather the ingredients, (2) set everything which needs to boil or simmer or bake to work in the background, (3) while most of the foods are cooking themselves you can direct your attention to high-impact searing; (4) by the time you’re done searing the chicken, the rice is finished and seasoned, the eggs are boiled, and the sauce is simmered, and you just combine them. KPI: reduce time spent cooking.

Yours could be more or less complicated. I’m guessing the former is true, so your action templates require more spice. Break down the high-level action steps into individual action items in detail. The solo podcaster’s double-check could be dissected into: (1) check if the microphone and mixer and properly connected and switched on; (2) check if the bitrate and gain in the recording program are correct; (3) check if the camera is connected and functioning; (4) do a test recording and adjust gain and camera angle as needed; (5) move to the next step.

Simple As That!

And, really, that’s it! You should be able to make templates for about any of your repetitive or per-project tasks. Do it. It’s worth it. Do it for your groceries, meal prep, exercise regimen, luggage packing, and home chores for practice. Do it for your work or business. Speed and smarten yourself up! “By failing to prepare,” the wise Founding Father known for his artistic smarts, Benjamin Franklin, says, “you are preparing to fail.”