Too busy doing busywork to work

Recently I published the 97th issue of Shopify Dispatch, a weekly curated newsletter of Shopify links.

I also did something that I should have done 2 years ago.

Up until yesterday I would go through all of the sources I use and pull out the article urls and titles by hand. I was using an ios app to help but I was still clicking (touching) about 3-4 buttons per article. With 20-40 articles per week, that added up.

It didn't take a lot of time, maybe 5-10 minutes per week, but it was low-value work.

20-40 minutes of manual busywork a month?

Hmm.

So instead of taking the 10 minutes yesterday, I took 45 minutes and figured out a way to create a small piece of software to do the clicking for me.

(It doesn't actually click everything but we'll just ignore that...)

Now I should be able to get links to all of the articles for Shopify Dispatch in about 30 seconds. Already in a format for me to start reading and picking the best.

If only I did this two years ago.

But that's what happens when you aren't focusing on the right things.

Another area I see people wasting a lot of time with is using Google's Data Highlighter to add structured data to their store. Adding structured data is probably worth your time but there's a much better (and cheaper) way.

JSON-LD for SEO can accomplish the same goal of the Data Highlighter but with only 2 minutes of your time, once.

So yeah, make sure you get your structured data setup for your store, but don't waste hours messing with Data Highlighter for it.

Eric Davis

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Each tip includes a way to improve your store: customer analysis, analytics, customer acquisition, CRO... plus plenty of puns and amazing alliterations.