Do you type the same things over and over and over again? Use a text expander, such as Text Blaze, and make “Groundhog Day” a friend.

When this post publishes, we will be a couple of days shy of another Groundhog Day. You’ve seen the movie, right? In the 1993 classic, Bill Murray portrays a weatherman assigned to cover the groundhog’s emergence from his hole. In a weird twist of events, the character finds himself living the same day over and over and over again.

At first, having the same repetition drives our hero crazy. Later in the movie, he uses the same situation to his advantage. He knows what sorts of things repeat day after day after day. Therefore, he is able to build systems that handle them.

How often do you feel just like the leading character in this movie? You receive emails asking the same questions. You find yourself keying in the same responses over and over and over again.

Perhaps you find yourself searching for some other email where another other person has the same question. After the search, you can copy and paste the response.

There’s got to be a better way.

There is.

It’s called a text expander.

The MiddleWeb article

I want to direct you to an article I just wrote for MiddleWeb.com. MiddleWeb is dedicated to middle-level educators. But this particular article applies to us all.

The article talks about Text Blaze, my text expander of choice. You’ll see examples there of how I use it.

I refer you to that article for two additional reasons:

• I’ve written quite a few articles for MiddleWeb over the years. While you are reading about Text Blaze and how to use it, enjoy some of my other articles.
• If you have friends who are in middle-level education, I hope you will share the site, and in particular, the articles I’ve written for it. The button below takes you there. Please copy the link you find and share it:

Most importantly, if you want to give Text Blaze a try, I am an affiliate. The button below will give you a month of Text Blaze Pro for free. After the month is over, you can pay for the pro version or revert to a very powerful free version. Text Blaze is something I use daily.

The repetition you saw in “Groundhog Day”…Is it monotony? Or was it a chance to put some things on autopilot and spend time on what you want to make time for?