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Hello Reader,

Her glare was strong enough to melt stone.

I was sitting at one of my favorite parks, overlooking the Katherine River. I was sleepily listening to the bird song and the breeze and just generally soaking in the calm peacefulness.

I knew that eventually I'd have to buckle down and focus on the work that I'd brought with me to my outdoors "office", but for the moment it was enough to just sit there and relax.

And besides, it was fun to watch the tourists visiting the park wander around and explore.

Then this older couple on foldable electric bikes caught my eye. They drifted along the flat, looking at the river flowing past. Just meandering and taking their time, as you should in this beautiful place.

And then for some reason, the woman decided she was going to ride up the path to the top of the park. It's quite a steep hill and longer than it looks. And I wasn't surprised when she got about maybe halfway up, ran out of steam and had to get off and push.

She put her muscles into the effort, head down, obviously struggling a bit with the steepness.

And five seconds later, her husband or partner, whoever, saw what was happening. He grinned and followed her, but he took a bit of a wider swing to get more of a run-up, shifted gears, then applied more power.

And went happily scooting all the way up the hill, impudently tooting as he went past his struggling companion. It wasn't just a "ha ha, look how clever I am" toot, either. It was an imperious "move off the path so I can get past" kind of noise.

You could see his impish grin from where I was sitting. And feel her glare right back. If looks were heat rays, he wouldn't have had any hair left.

And I suspect she probably had something to say to him later.

I watched her push that bike up the hill with everything she had. And I watched him get further up with less effort, because he changed his approach before he ran out of steam.

That's most of us with our businesses too. We push harder in the same gear instead of asking whether there's a smarter way up the hill.

Here's a small thing to try this week: pick one task you've been muscling through and ask, is there a gear change here, not more effort, a better tool, a different order, someone else doing it, before you push any harder.

Back to Basics Reminder

Here's a small thing to try this week: hand AI a task you've always kept fully manual, and let it do a first pass instead of you doing the grind.

I did this recently with my podcast episode pages. Every time a new episode goes live, I used to build the page myself, pulling in the show notes, the player, all of it. Now Claude does the first pass and I just check it over.

If a full task feels like too big a leap, start smaller. Feed ChatGPT (or your AI tool of choice) your website copy, your last few emails, or your offer page and ask it to point out what's outdated or inconsistent. That's the braver bit, because you actually have to look at what it finds.

A Quick Time-Saving Tip

I know I've shared this one before, but it's absolutely priceless and worth repeating.

When you hand a task to your AI "assistant", add one line to your prompt:

It stops the tool from guessing and filling gaps with assumptions. You get a result closer to right the first time, instead of three rounds of "no, not quite" back and forth.

Highlight of the Week

Go listen to Ep. 252: AI Is a Toddler With Crayons: How to Rein It In and Put It to Work with Dan Kurtz.

Then go grab yourself your favourite hot drink of choice and think about this question: does what Dan's saying scare you, or excite you with the opportunities?

This one goes further than the time-saving tip earlier in this newsletter. Dan's talking about access to personal information, and the choice every business owner has to make about using it ethically or not. That's a bigger question than saving 30 minutes, and it's one only you can answer for your own business.

And that's it for this week. Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Trudy

P.S. Treasa (my Freelance Writers Online fellow collaborator and co-writer) is a content strategist who's brilliant at explaining the difference between a content strategy and a content plan (they're not the same thing) and getting your content to actually do the job you need it to do for your business.

She's running her Content Strategy Bootcamp in August, five live sessions from August 17 to 21. Whether you're a content creator, a small business owner, or both, you'll get a lot out of it.