Templates That Get Better Every Time

If you do the same kind of work repeatedly, you end up making templates. Materials, steps, things to watch out for — write it down once, start from there next time.

But here’s the thing: the real improvements to a template almost never happen while you’re editing the template. They happen mid-work. “This step comes too late.” “We needed one more item on the list.” Those realizations get written into today’s task, and when the work is done, they stay there. The template doesn’t change. Next time you start from the old procedure and fix the same things all over again.

Which part is the template, and which part is today?

In Fecit, when you open a task or memo created from a template, you can now tell the template apart from today’s notes. Turn on the template button at the end of the editing toolbar, and the sentences that came from the template light up softly. However much this run’s notes are mixed in, you can see the skeleton at a glance.

And while that mode is on, your edits belong to the template. Fix the order of steps or reword an instruction, and it’s recorded not as “today’s note” but as “here’s how the template should change.”

Sending your fixes home

When the work is done, press Apply to template. Fecit shows you what changed against the template, and you pick which changes to send back. Leave out the edits that were only about today; keep the improvements that will hold next time.

If it’s a shared template your team uses, the same flow becomes a suggestion instead — whoever maintains the template reviews it and decides.

Templates that grow with your records

What this feature is really for is simple: making sure what you learn while doing the work doesn’t end with the work. When templates grow with your records, the second run is better than the first, and the tenth is better than the ninth.

That’s what achievement looks like to us — not doing the same thing again, but doing it better than last time.