Real-Time Stats in Google Analytics?

I thought I'd share a useful trick in Google Analytics to show nearly real-time statistics.  For anyone who has used Analytics for any length of time, this is probably very obvious.  But I have to admit it's kind of hidden... I didn't notice it for quite some time.

The default timerame for Analytics is the previous 30 days, ending at yesterday.  Because today's data doesn't show up in the default view until midnight, I had assumed that the data wasn't there until midnight.  Actually, that's not true.  Today's data is there, but the date range selector defaults to ending yesterday.  All you need to do is to change the date range to include today's date.  I'm sure this still isn't truly real time, but in my experience, the lag time is often as short as ten minutes.