Originally published in TSP Live Insider on March 4th, 2023.
For two months I logged in a journal all the things I did each day for The Sharp Plays regardless of my location. Then I sat down and analyzed it through a spreadsheet to see where I was spending my time and what was being accomplished. Yes, this is how I find joy…I am insane person! You know what they say though, it’s a fine line between genius and insanity…I find I dabble in both…more so on the insanity side.
Through this insanity, I found ways to optimize. Most of the changes you won’t really see, but they have been in place since January 1st…so if you haven’t noticed anything…that’s good, because it has made a HUGE difference on this side.
The changes you will see include…
1) The launch of the Degenerate Club Report, and it’s corresponding content and associated alerts (Late Releases, Tighteners, etc.). The report was created as a way to maximize the intel you get and minimize the technical time necessary to get it to you. It’s paid some great dividends already and we are only two months in. It is not a coincidence that January and February performance in 2023 has been better than any prior years…and those were some good years. I think it is a direct result of the changes put in place.
2) There are these arbitrary rules that for some reason I set for myself along the way. I wonder why I am such a moron to have boxed myself into so many stupid procedures. The Sharp Plays became more about procedure/bureaucracy than just delivering good & informative content throughout the day.
I’ll give you an example, I post the public concentrations daily. Running them is a relatively quick procedure (1 minute or less). The clerical time for posting them occurs the next day and is 5-6 minutes. Why? The following morning I go back to Twitter and find the public concentration tweet, I log all the wagers from the tweet in the content log and then go to Don Best to pull the consensus lines for each of those wagers. Then I log the win/loss results and unit performance in the content log. Then I head over to the records tables and update the win or loss and adjust the overall units. It’s hardly heavy lifting at 5-6 minutes, especially when working at my home office with multiple monitors. However, when I am traveling or otherwise mobile and working on a tablet…it’s a pain in the ass of flipping between screens. A procedure which then takes about twice the time. I don’t mind the time per se, but the more time I spend flipping through screens on my iPad to update public concentration performance for the previous day is time that’s being taken away from content generation for the day ahead!
As I said, if I am at my home office, sure it takes a few minutes, but it is easy to do. However, for those occasions I am mobile/traveling/whatever and don’t want to take the time the next day, I can just post the information and tell you it isn’t being graded/logged in advance. Simple! Somehow I became a prisoner to this idea that if I post something then I must log it…OR ELSE!!! Who says?!?! Do I get fined by some gaming commission??? LOL! I’ll just be sure to be upfront and tell you when something won’t be logged…then you can do with that info as you please…knowing IN ADVANCE that it isn’t going to be logged/graded. Thereby I can still keep you informed on a daily basis…and I don’t have to dick around with the clerical work if time is limited.
IF I DON’T SPECIFICALLY SAY SOMETHING ISN’T BEING LOGGED, THEN YOU CAN REST ASSURED THE CONTENT IS BEING LOGGED. IF SOMETHING CARRIES A UNIT RATING IT WILL ALWAYS BE LOGGED!! JUST THIS SIMPLE CHANGES ALLOWS ME TO BE SO MUCH MORE AGILE WITHIN THE CONTENT…AND KEEP YOU WELL INFORMED.
3) The reason I moved the Evening Arrivals and Cutting Room Floor content from TSP Live to Telegram was two fold. First, the content doesn’t perform to the level I set for TSP Live content, but it hasn’t been bad and it does have some useful spots. It is good to keep tracking the negative subsets too in case a good fade angle (or follow) should pop up. So, this content was put on the farm team (Telegram and Twitter) versus TSP Live. Second, by making the content free versus paid, if there is a day I can’t get to it because I am working on upgrades, it’s a busy day of TSP Live content, or for some other reason which prevents me from having the time to run them, they just won’t go out. It’s free content so there is no written nor unwritten agreement that it must be provided each day.
4) The “if it’s rated, it’s graded” for content is a change that started this year and it has been working beautifully. It makes it easy for you to know what will comprise the records and what will not. Following TSP content has never been easier than the setup in 2023!
The changes above have made the content and operations very lightweight and much more agile in 2023. By having the operations lightweight, it allows me to 3-5X more time developing and analyzing content than I had previously. As has hopefully been illustrated…the more time I can spend on content, the better the performance of the content…and that’s the goal at the end of the day! Why else are you here other than for content that performs? It surely isn’t for my witty commentary. 😉
Good luck!