The “Break it Down” Blog

In the past when I’ve been writing documents for official use (proposals, project plans, resumes, legal docs, etc.) I’ve always followed a failing process of:

1. Decide I need to write a doc
2. Start writing the doc, then realize it looks shitty in OpenOffice Writer, so I decide I want an official template to start with
3. Search Google for “free document template” or “document templates” or something to that effect
4. Gets 1000s of search results that are all spam, parked domain pages, bullshit commercial products or $14.99 shareware circa 1995 that doesn’t do what I want.
5. I give up, and just go back to writing my doc.

That is why I was excited to see someone over at makeuseof.com actually compile a list of their 3 favorite services for exactly this type of material.

I’ll lay it out quickly for you, check out the original post for more detail:

• .docstoc – Community driven. Currently weighs in at around 65k templates and an excellent resource.
• gazhoo – A “marketplace” for documents you can buy/sell, but as Aibek pointed out, there is a ton of free content here as well.
• Scribd – A virtual document library. Dig in, dig around, find something you like and use it.

So hopefully next time you are writing up your resume or doing a work proposal for your contracting company, you can hit up one of these sites for a professional template and use that; making your digital life just a hair easier.