# What are templates Templates are one of my favorite productivity boosters. They help streamline Knowledge Management practices. They also help a lot with consistency, scalability and maintainability. Templates are pre-designed "structures" that provide a consistent format for capturing and structuring information. Software developers use those all the time. For instance, to send pre-formatted e-mails and notifications, generate Web pages or forms, etc. Templates define a structure and include "tokens" that get replaced by actual values when they're used. There are two elements that come into play: - Templates - Template engines The template defines the structure and tokens, while the template engine takes the template and replaces the tokens by actual values. To give you a concrete example, let's assume that you want to start journaling. If you have a journal, then you're surely going to create daily notes. And maybe you'll also create weekly, monthly and yearly notes. All of those should have a predefined structure. Instead of typing that structure each time you add a note to your journal, you want to define it once in a template, and reuse it all the time. That's exactly why my [[Obsidian Starter Kit]] includes a set of templates. They heavily accelerate note-taking and help improve consistency. Note that there are countless templating formats and template engines. Many are tool or platform specific. Some are also tool agnostic, for instance text expanders such as [[Espanso]]. The nice thing with [[Text expanders]] is that they can be used anywhere. For instance, I use Espanso to replace my project acronyms with the full url, or semicolon bio to my full bio. There are countless ways to leverage text expanders to save time, but that's for another course. Templates standardize the way information is captured, ensuring that similar data is recorded and organized in a comparable manner. This uniformity is vital for later retrieval, review, and integration of knowledge, as it reduces cognitive friction and makes connections between different pieces of information obvious. They act as guides you can follow, ensuring you capture what you need or want to. Combined with automation, templates are really key for consistency. And that's the best part. Templates are generally hard to define, but easy to reuse. With templates, the focus shifts from how to capture information to the information itself, leading to clearer thoughts and more effective learning. In addition, templates can also make information easier to find. If your templates include tags and specific naming conventions, those will be applied and respected automatically. For instance, if you use a template for daily notes and include a "type/periodic_note/daily" tag, all your daily notes will be tagged automatically. And the same goes for the content itself. Finally, templates are very flexible. They're not static and set in stone. They are dynamic, and can be modified/optimized as needed. This adaptability ensures that templates remain relevant and continue to support you over time. You can start simple, and improve those over time. Changes won't apply to existing notes, but at least the new ones will follow your new rules. Again, progress over perfection. ## Related - [[Templates can evolve over time]] - [[Templates make notes easier to find]] - [[Templates boost PKM consistency]] - [[Text expanders]]