Few things feel as great as knowing that you have just had a productive day at work.
You’ve accomplished all the tasks you needed to do, and in an incredibly efficient manner at that.
Everyone wants to be productive at work. However, we all know it’s easier said than done.
Whether we’re productive or not often boils down to our work habits.
If we have bad habits like not being able to resist peeking at our social media accounts while we’re supposed to be in the middle of a busy day, our productivity will most certainly take a hit. The same goes for procrastinating.
On the other hand, good work habits like planning will help with your productivity. So working smarter, not harder, is a great work habit to have, too.
Using tools like Excel worksheet templates is an excellent way of working more innovatively to increase work productivity.
Excel spreadsheets like the ones listed below can streamline processes and simplify communication and collaborations, which help you save time and boost your productivity.
Gantt Chart Project Template
Often, the number of tasks we have on our plate on any given day can get overwhelming, right to the point where we don’t have any idea where to start.
However, if your team uses an Excel Gantt Chart Project Template, designating, tracking, and managing all tasks and deliverables on the pipeline can be done much more efficiently.
With a Gantt Chart, you and everyone on your team can visualize all tasks, allowing you to see start and completion dates and their priority levels, among other things.
Excel Project Budget Templates
Can you imagine making your budgeting strategy up as you go along running your project?
The word “budget” itself connotes planning. You need to predict and manage every aspect of your project’s finances down to the last dollar.
Whether you’re allocating funds or creating detailed costings for the project, doing that should be more convenient and time-saving when you use an Excel Budget template, which is appropriate for any project regardless of scale and industry.
World Meeting Planner
In an era where anybody can work online with anyone wherever in the world they may be, regular meetings and conference calls with people in varying time zones are already a given.
That being the case, there is a need to plan these conference calls and meetings, and the World Meeting Planner should come in handy for this task.
With this Excel spreadsheet, you should be able to list your location and up to six of your colleagues’.
Once you have entered their UTC Offsets and picked the proper DST Rule for each location, you can type in the meeting time you have in mind and see if the Time Comparison Table shows that it will work for everyone on the team.
Social Media Content Calendar
We mentioned above that being distracted by social media while working can be a bad habit that affects productivity.
However, that wouldn’t be the case if your work involves posting on social media.
It may be a fun job, but it can get stressful at times. What will all the pieces of content you’ll have to post across all social media platforms on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis?
Most of the time, you need to schedule posts down to the exact time it goes live. The Social Media Content Calendar template should help you do all that with ease.
Aside from helping schedule posts, the Social Media Content Calendar can also help you build a comprehensive list of every single content idea that comes to mind, allowing you to create content quickly whenever the need arises.
Blog Editorial Calendar Template
Blogging for kicks may be easy but blogging as part of a digital marketing strategy is an entirely different animal.
As part of your effort to get your brand out there, you will need to put a lot of thought into anything you post on your blog.
Comprehensive planning is required whenever you create a blog post. Apart from ensuring the quality of the content itself, it would be best to manage all other aspects of blogging, including organizing all entries and keeping the tone of your posts consistent with your brand.
The Blog Editorial Calendar Template from HubSpot can help you save time and make you more productive.
With this template, you can easily choose blog topics and keywords to use in your posts. Scheduling the date and time of publication of your blog posts is also a cinch with the Blog Editorial Calendar Template.
Page Status Report Template
When you’re running a project, one of your biggest concerns would be knowing how it’s doing.
Status reports would tell you precisely what you want to know, but such reports from different members of your team could differ, and sifting through the information could take you some time.
You would want to know the status of your project briefly, and that’s where the Page Status Report Template comes in.
With the Page Status Report Template, you can focus on pertinent information such as issues affecting your project, its costs, the milestones hit, and the risks you’re facing, all presented in a clear, consistent format.
Event Fundraiser
Let’s say your company is holding a small-scale fundraising event. Considering that such activity involves donations from other individuals and entities, you should always be on top of things, or things could get messy.
With the Event Fundraiser template, you can track the overall progress of your event more efficiently.
Aside from helping you monitor the funds coming in against set targets, the Event Fundraiser template also comes in handy once auditing begins. With the record and transparency it provides, the Event Fundraiser template ensures there won’t be any trouble on your end.
These are just some of the many Excel templates that can help you work more efficiently and boost your productivity, but they’re an excellent place to start. Try downloading them all and see for yourself how productive you can get if you put them to use.
We hope you enjoyed this article. If so, you might enjoy these resources:
- Why is Project Management Important for Your Business?
- 13 Best Project Management tools for Startups
- 11 Best Project Management Software for Freelancers
- 12 Best Project Management Software for Mac
- 11 Best Project Management Software for Nonprofits
- Best Project Management Training Courses Online
- Best 10 Project Management Software for Small Business
- 11 Best Free Project Management Software Solutions
