Turn Your Second Time Into Your Last Time
Don't Wait Until You've Done It Ten Times
I was about to edit a client’s newsletter last week.
The exact same kind of edit I’d done seven days earlier—same draft pattern, same questions, same notes back to her.
And I almost just... did it.
Fingers on the keyboard. Brain on autopilot. Twenty minutes to get through it.
Then something clicked.
I stopped.
Not because I didn’t have time. Because I had just enough memory of what I did last week to write it down properly.
So I spent fifteen minutes building a skill—basically a small piece of automation—that captures the steps. Now my assistant can run it. I can run it. The first draft is ready before I even start reading.
Here’s what most creators get wrong about systems.
They wait too long.
They do the task five times. Then ten. Then it gets annoying. Then they finally write down the steps—except by then, half the original logic has faded. They’re reconstructing instead of capturing.
The cheapest time to build a system isn’t when you’re sick of doing the thing.
It’s the third time.
The third time, you still remember the choices you made the first time. You had a second run at it to make the process better and clean everything up. Why you opened with that line. Why you cut that paragraph. Why you reordered the middle.
Miss that window and you’ll either rebuild it from scratch or just keep doing it the slow way forever.
Most newsletter writers I work with have a “system tax” they don’t even see.
It’s the difference between doing something twenty times and doing it once or twice then running a skill eighteen times.
That difference is only 15 minutes in the moment, but it adds up.
Matt “third time tax” Ragland
P.S. I’m starting the next Claude for Creators cohort in July. Click here to learn more and grab your spot. I limit the group to 10 people so everyone gets attention and support.