Between too much and too little

I've wrested with this very thing for a long time. My issue is fun. I like a less cluttered application because it seems simpler and more fun. Also, I like faster loading. Yes, it's only 5 more seconds to load Word, but them's the times we live in. Here's what I did.

I created abut five Word templates - not .dot files, just .docx, each with different fonts for headings, sub heads, paragraph, etc. I also created a file containing ordered and unordered lists using each font so I could copy and paste. Finally one more file with various headers and footers.

Also, for each "template" I applied basic formatting that I prefer - such as "no paragraph spacing". So for each new document, I open the one I want and go from there. I just have to remember to do a Save As before starting to type. As an extra precaution, I keep a copied set of my templates.

Did the same thing with Excel.

Note: if you work with anything web based - web page editing and don't want to fire up the main editor, Notepad++ is a nice text editor that does have some basic formatting but show line numbers for code. Thought I'd mention that just in case you may want to try that one out. Plenty of web-based options out there too - both for actual document editing and even things like web mail. I actually like the text editor in WordPress (I just haven't tried converting these into Word, or tried a copy/paste)

Oh, almost forgot. I don't use it much, but the speech to text engine in Win7 works pretty darn good if you ask me. Yeah, I don't generally like people around me listening to my input, but it's cool on occasion. And I'm just using the mic built into my webcam