Yesterday I finally sat down to work on an upcoming event, fleshing out the intent, core message, and overall experience. It was a creative, productive few hours, and it felt good to have gained some traction on work that I am passionate about. There were several other things that needed my attention, so I left the document open on my desktop, intending to come back and look it over again before closing up my office for the day.

Maybe you have an inkling of what happened.

After taking a break to walk Gracie-the-chocolate-labradoodle, I came back to my computer intending to return to my work-in-progress, but it was nowhere to be found. I had neglected to name it as soon as I opened up a new document, which if I had done so would have triggered auto-save. After a couple of hours of researching and attempting different ways of recovering the document, and spending way too much energy on frustration and self-criticism, I called it a day. I’d just have to start over.

Lesson learned. Name your shit early.

This, of course, applies to far more than document creation and the protection of our work. In every aspect of our lives, the quicker we take ownership for what is ours, the sooner we name our shit, the less energy we will have to spend on recovery and starting over.