You're doing the same thing again.

Manually sending onboarding emails. Copying data between systems. Running the same deployment commands. Formatting the same reports.

Every repetitive task is stealing time from work that actually matters.

The Hidden Time Drain

Manual work is expensive:

It's time you spend repeatedly. Every hour spent on repeatable tasks is an hour not spent on things you can only do once.

It's mental overhead. Remembering to do things. Keeping track. The cognitive load.

It's error-prone. Manual steps get missed. Typos happen. Consistency suffers.

It doesn't compound. Unlike systems, manual work doesn't get better the more you do it.

You're trading your most valuable resource—time—on the lowest-value work.

What to Automate

Look for patterns:

Repetitive tasks. Anything you do more than three times is a candidate.

Regular schedules. Daily, weekly, monthly tasks. Reports. Cleanups. Updates.

Data movement. Copying information between systems. Syncing. Reformatting.

Communication patterns. Onboarding emails. Follow-ups. Notifications.

Deployment and ops. Releases. Backups. Monitoring alerts.

If you're doing it regularly and it follows a pattern, it can probably be automated.

The 10x Rule

A useful heuristic:

If it takes 10 minutes and you'll do it 50 times, spend 500 minutes automating it.

Actually, spend less. Because automation:

  • Reduces errors
  • Frees mental space
  • Runs while you sleep
  • Scales without additional effort

The math usually favors automation more than you think.

Simple Automation Tools

You don't need complex systems:

Cron jobs. Scheduled scripts. The oldest automation, still effective.

Zapier/Make. Connect services without code. Good for many common workflows.

Email templates. Not glamorous, but effective. Pre-written responses for common situations.

Shell scripts. A few lines of bash can save hours over time.

Scheduled database queries. Reports that generate themselves.

Start simple. Complexity comes later if needed.

Automate Your Product, Too

This applies to your product as well as your operations:

User onboarding. Automated email sequences. In-app guidance. Self-service setup.

Support patterns. FAQs. Help docs. Chatbots for common questions.

Billing and invoicing. Payment reminders. Subscription management. Receipt generation.

Usage reports. Automated summaries for customers. Value demonstration on autopilot.

Every manual touchpoint is an opportunity for automation.

The Automation Payoff

When you automate:

Time returns. Hours come back. You're doing new work instead of repeated work.

Reliability improves. Systems don't forget. They don't make typos. They don't have off days.

You can focus. Less mental load from remembering and tracking.

You can scale. Adding customers doesn't linearly add work.

What Not to Automate

Some things should stay manual:

Customer relationships. Personal touches matter. Don't automate away connection.

Creative decisions. Strategy, positioning, product direction. These need human judgment.

Edge cases. Rare situations where automation breaks or creates more problems than it solves.

Things you don't understand yet. Automate processes you know well. Not processes you're still figuring out.

Start Today

Pick one thing.

The task you did this week that you'll do next week. The same one you did last week.

Automate that.

Then pick the next one.

Related Reading