I have some pet peeves such as:
- Dishes left in the sink overnight
- Dust bunnies in the corners of the house
- Tiresome 2-hour status meetings when check-in emails would've sufficed
- Mostly anything that wastes my time
I'm always obsessed with trying to optimize my grunt work tasks so that I can spend it doing the things I'd rather be doing.
One of my biggest pet peeves that sucks up my time is anything that causes me to have to do the work twice. I'm specically thinking about how frequently people send me their files that are poorly named. I sometimes do design work for my clients. A frequent request is to create graphics that feature speakers (e.g. new podcast images or landing pages with a lot of presenters).
Even though we clearly spell out what needs to be sent to us, what we get is a bunch of emails with photos that are named such riveting and obscure titles as img422678345_174.png. Not only do we have to resize (and often fix) wonky profile images, we then have to rename each one so it makes sense to anyone else who needs to use the file. Do you think I have any idea what that original file name means or who it references? Neither will the search engines!
One of the smartest and simplest things you can do when saving your images is to use a strategic naming protocol. Need to share your media kit or profile images with outlets that are featuring you or your work online (such as speaking events, podcasts, articles or online summits)? Rename your headshot with something like yourfirstname-yourlastname.jpg. You can even add a word that states your industry or service such as yourfirstname-yourlastname-healthcoach.jpg. Hyphens help to separate the words in the image name (use hyphens instead of underscores).
Google image search is a real thing and using your name and specific keywords in your file name is a smart idea. You can check it out right now by going to Google, search for your name and click the images tab. Are you happy with the images that come up? If not, you can fix it by renaming profile and headshot photos you've uploaded online. And when you're sending smartly named files to others, it makes it MUCH easier for the person who needs to use them to find them at a later date (saving them time and making their work that much more efficient).