Why templates feel like a quick win
The first time I opened Miro, I was overwhelmed by the completely empty canvas. No buttons telling me what to do, no helpful starting point beyond a blank infinity. Then I discovered the big colorful template gallery button on the left. Boom — suddenly I had premade flowcharts, mind maps, and even sprint retrospectives dropped onto the board in seconds. For anyone just starting out, this is the obvious grab. You do not need to figure out how to size sticky notes or align arrows. The template feels like training wheels, and training wheels are reassuring when your board looks like a chaotic sea of yellow notes.
But what I noticed in real use is that templates load with way too much decoration. Titles in fancy shapes, example stickies with Lorem Ipsum, entire headers that I always delete anyway. For a while I thought I was saving time, but when I counted the clicks, sometimes I spent longer stripping a template down than if I had drawn the boxes myself. One teammate joked, “I just want stickies and arrows, not a Pinterest board.” Honestly same.
When custom boards save your sanity
At a certain point, I realized starting from scratch actually got me into the flow faster. A blank board sounds scary, but if you already know you just need three columns labeled To Do, Doing, and Done — why waste time loading the prebuilt template with seven extra columns called Things We Wish We Did. I had that exact situation during a retro. I picked the standard template and ended up with like five columns we never used. By the time everyone joined, I was rushing to delete stuff live and it felt awkward. Someone actually said, “Wait, are we supposed to use that column?” I just shook my head. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When I build custom boards, there’s no cleanup. I drag new stickies, group them, and add simple text headers. Nothing fancy, but nothing extra. The downside is I do have to manually create those layouts every time, which gets repetitive if I run retros weekly. That is why I sometimes clone my own past boards — it is like having my own template library, but without the clutter.
Time pressure changes the choice entirely
The real deciding factor: how much time do you have before a meeting starts. If I am scrambling with five minutes to spare, grabbing a template beats scrambling to design a board. Even if I spend some extra time deleting, at least people will not join to a literal empty canvas. When time is on my side, I go custom. Weirdly enough, the pressure of everyone watching you drag boxes live makes templates feel safer, even if they are overkill.
Another trick I discovered when running workshops with clients is to preload template boards ahead of time, even if I know I will customize them. That way, I avoid that awkward screen share moment where I am fumbling with settings. Preparation beats improvisation here.
The detail people forget about navigation
Here is a hidden headache I never realized until I forgot to resize stuff: most templates come zoomed way out. For some reason, when participants first open the board, it shows them a bird’s eye view of everything. That is fine for large flow diagrams. But for brainstorming sessions, everyone had to immediately zoom in to even read the stickies. I lost about five minutes one day just explaining to people how to zoom. Contrast that with a custom board — I set things where I want them, zoom level looks fine, and participants drop straight into the working area. Templates often set you up in the wrong “scale.”
Graphically, here’s how it feels:
Template Board Zoom Levels:
– Start: way zoomed out, 10 areas visible
– User action: pan around, squint at unreadable text
– Fix: awkward live resizing
Custom Board Zoom Levels:
– Start: exactly one area visible
– User action: start typing immediately
– Fix: none required 🙂
Consistency across multiple sessions
The hidden win with templates is consistency. If you run the same process across multiple teams, you actually want the same structure every time so comparisons are easier. For example, I was running team retros across four departments. Without templates, each board looked wildly different — different colors, different column labels, total mess when I wanted to compare feedback. Once I forced myself to use the same template, suddenly the data lined up nicely. It made pulling themes across teams less painful.
Meanwhile, for one off brainstorms, rigid templates block creativity. People get confused by sections they do not need. If I tell them just throw sticky notes anywhere, they go for it on a custom board. That flexibility works better when the goal is free idea generation instead of measurable categories.
How duplication becomes its own system
Eventually I found myself creating my own ad hoc template system. I run a clean board once, then instead of deleting it after the session, I duplicate it into my “Workshop Setup” folder. Next time I need that type of meeting, I just clone it forward and wipe the stickies. In practice, this is faster than opening the official Miro gallery. And it avoids weird stock example notes that confuse people. The downside is I now have like ten nearly identical boards cluttering my dashboard. Half the time, I open the wrong one because the titles are almost the same. My naming convention is a mess — things like “Retro Final FINAL” — but honestly that is still better than reformatting a template every single time.
Minor quirks that still break flow
One bug I hit repeatedly: custom boards sometimes do not save the background grid or snap settings. I will get everything lined up neatly, close the tab, and when I reopen, snap is off and alignment is slightly shifted. Templates never seem to suffer from that glitch, probably because they were designed with presets. If you care about aesthetics, that is one good argument for sticking with templates. But I value speed more, so I live with the occasional crooked sticky. Also, templates sometimes contain locked shapes that I forget are locked. During one session I wasted two minutes just trying to resize a frozen square before realizing it was locked. Everyone watching could see me struggling. Not my proudest moment 😛
The realistic decision making shortcut
After a lot of fumbling, my “rule” is basically this: Use templates when you need to save face during time crunches or when consistency across groups matters. Use custom boards when the process is creative, messy, or specific enough that templates will just slow you down with excess trash to delete. And if you run similar sessions a lot, just duplicate your own boards until you build a personal library that feels lighter than the official one. This messy hybrid approach is not clean or elegant, but honestly it reflects how most of us actually work in Miro.
The funny part is every time I try to make a hard rule for myself, I break it the very next week depending on the situation.