My job is becoming 90% thinking. And I still catch myself wishing my day was 90%
By Max Sigurdson-Scott · June 4, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
My job is becoming 90% thinking. And I still catch myself wishing my day was 90% doing.
From this week's SFTB Newsletter:
For years, busy meant working. Sourcing products, packing and labeling FBA boxes, driving to UPS, etc. The whole system measured output. I felt better when I was actually moving my body and doing stuff. At the end of the day when I'd shipped off 20 boxes to Amazon I felt like I'd accomplished something big. A good day's work.
Now, I don't do any of that. My job is to "think." It's to decide strategy. Check PPC, Answer e-mails and fight with AI. That's what I do now.
So why is it so much more less satisfying than packing boxes? Why do I feel like I'm not moving the needle forward or getting work done?
Maybe that feeling was measuring motion, not progress. It's easy to see boxes and easy to hold them and send them on their way. It's not easy to see progress. Especially when you're in it all day, every day. Even if the thing you did moves the business forward further than packing 20 boxes ever did, it's still hard to see.
So now I protect the thing that feels the least productive of all: time with nothing in it. Just me and a problem. It feels lazy. But that empty space is where the decisions come from.
Also in this week's issue: why Amazon's price matching bots are flagging 10-packs against 2-pack competitors, 95 ways Claude can navigate the two-thirds of Seller Central with no API, Amazon just dropped the paywall on customer purchase data that shows what your buyers order when they're NOT buying from you, and the Airbnb discount that kicks in at exactly 7 days.
If you missed it, the full issue is here: https://lnkd.in/g-mixyPa
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