Stealing back lost time

Last week I went in for a checkup first thing in the morning.

The problem is that mornings are my prime time for running and writing which meant I'd lose the most valuable 2 hour block of my day.

I thought about rescheduling but this doctor had a three month wait so that option was out.

After allowing myself a few minutes of being frustrated, I realized that his office was just about 4 miles away.

My scheduled run for the day was 2 miles.

That meant I could run back home, get my run in, and win back a bit of my time.

Which is what I did.

(I even banked the extra two miles to shorten another run later in the week)

Sometimes you're forced to do things.

You can complain about being forced (I usually do) but once you get past that point, you still have to do them.

So try to find ways to make the forced effort worth it.

For example, have you heard that your SEO is suffering because you don't have alt text on your product images? That's a ton of boring busywork but it's important to do right and not automate away.

Take that time to cleanup, crop, or even re-take the worst of those images while you're entering them.

Or take that alt text and expand it into another paragraph of content talking about each of the visual aspects of your product.

Will it take longer? Yes.

But it's an improvement that will help you in the long-term.

Future You will thank Present You.

Oh and if you go out for a run right after a blood draw... perhaps start out a bit easier than normal. Whoops.

Another way to re-use work is to analyze data you already have instead of trying to collect more.

Repeat Customer Insights will automatically segment and analyze your entire customer base based on the valuable data Shopify has already collected. With several reports and analyses, it can tease recommendations out of the most stubborn data.

Eric Davis