The five replies worth saving first

The usual way this goes: you install something to stop retyping messages, sit down with good intentions, write twenty templates for situations you might face, and never open it again. The library was homework, so it got treated like homework.

The version that sticks is smaller. Five replies, all of which you have already typed by hand this month.

1. The one you send more than any other

Not the most important one. The most frequent one. For a lot of people it’s some variant of “yes, that time works” or “thanks, got it, I’ll come back to you today.”

It feels too trivial to save. Save it anyway - frequency is the whole return.

2. Your details

Address, booking link, licence number, IBAN, the exact spelling of your business name. The things you currently retrieve by scrolling up a thread to copy from yourself.

This is the one where a blank earns its keep immediately: write it once, and let the profile fill in your own particulars rather than hard-coding them.

3. The first question every new enquiry asks

Every trade has one. Price. Availability. Whether you cover a postcode. Whether you take pets. You answer it several times a week and the answer barely changes.

Leave a blank for the part that does change:

Thanks for getting in touch! For [service] we’re at [price], and the next opening is [day]. Want me to hold it?

The blank is what stops this becoming eight near-identical copies later.

4. The one you dread writing

The polite no. The chase for an overdue invoice. The apology for running late. These take disproportionate time because you rewrite them from scratch each time to get the tone right - and then throw the good version away.

Save the good version. Getting the tone right once is worth more than any of the others on this list.

5. The handoff

“Here’s what happens next.” Confirmation, next steps, what you need from them, when they’ll hear from you again. It’s the reply that prevents three follow-up questions, and it’s almost always the one people improvise.

Then stop

Four things happen over the next fortnight if you leave it there:

• You reach for the five constantly, so the habit forms.
• You catch yourself retyping something for the third time, which is a much better signal for what to save next than imagination is.
• The library grows from real evidence rather than from a planning session.
• You start noticing which parts of a message change - that’s when folders and blanks become obviously worth setting up, instead of feeling like admin.

The people with libraries of two hundred replies did not write two hundred replies. They wrote five, then added one whenever something annoyed them twice.

If you want a bigger starting set for a specific job, the real estate templates are written to be copied directly, and this guide covers keeping a library organised once it outgrows one list.