July 2nd, 2009 in Productivity

The Benefits of Automation

Automation is the use of control systems to control processes, reducing the need for human intervention. Putting this into context, automation is having technology do things for you so that you don’t have to.

Automation is all around us. When you’re at a set of traffic lights, there isn’t a traffic light operator that decides when to change the light from red to green. It is done automatically. The street lights come on at night automatically. There are no lamplighters running around turning each light on anymore. We can apply this same idea to our own life. Granted, most of us can’t create complex control systems, so we will have to do our best with what is available, but having the most mundane tasks automated will help free up some time.

The advantages are clear. If every time you checked your e-mails, all the messages had been sorted into folders before you logged on, you save time that you would have previously spent. If your Twitter account posts a message every time you update your website, you save time because you don’t need to do it yourself.

If you spend an hour a day doing small tasks like these, you’re wasting a considerable amount of time. Automating these tasks will allow you to be able to work on what you consider is important. All you have to worry about is the technology working…

A good starting point is to automate the things that we don’t want to spend time doing. Sorting e-mails into folders, de-cluttering your hard drive, updating all of your social media profiles. These little monotonous tasks can begin to take up a significant part of our day.

Automating your e-mail sorting is a good first step for many. It is easy to do and there are tutorials for all the e-mail applications that you can think of. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, Mail. Find a tutorial on Google and apply it to your computer.

There are many, many tutorials on automating tasks. From having Gmail automatically sort your emails with labels, or having a program record what you do in Microsoft Office and then repeat that when necessary. Any task that you can think of that is repetitive can be done with a computer. That is one of the purposes of a computer. Carrying out repetitive monotonous tasks so that we don’t have to.

A web application that I find very handy is Twitterfeed. Everytime I post an update to my site, Twitterfeed automatically creates and publishes a message with a link to the post. All of my followers are given a link to my blog post without me having done more than publish it. This can be expanded further, as Facebook has an application that will update your Facebook account with your Twitter messages. So when Twitterfeed updates your Twitter account with the post, the Facebook application (named Twitter) will update your Facebook account. Again, all done without any input (apart from the initial setup).

Ask yourself how you can apply the same idea to all aspects of your day. What do you spend your time doing that you could automate? Free up some time and you could be spending it doing something worthwhile. Let technology do things for you while you get on with the things that are important.

After you get one task automated, you’ll find others that you can automate too. Having all those small tasks automated will really affect the amount of free time you have. That’s time you can spend doing something you want to.

WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY

Paul Dickinson

Paul Dickinson is the author of SolopreneurProductivity.com, a blog designed for the sole purpose of providing productivity tips and tricks for solopreneurs!Follow me on Twitter: @pauldickinson

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Clint says on July 2nd, 2009 at 9:39 am
Sorry if it’s off topic, but I get a kick out of the included image. Those 3 gears will never turn, because the 3rd binds the other 2.
Perhaps the message is: Too much automation can freeze your progress? ;)
Dan Ross says on July 2nd, 2009 at 10:23 am
Automation is great but the problem with Twitterfeed is that it is quickly getting a reputation being associated with spammers, twitterbots, etc. Anytime I see something with Twitterfeed I think “non-personal”, automated, not engaged, etc. I hate saying it but automation does have a dark side and, when it becomes associated 95% of the time with negative news/experiences users can become disengaged.
Automation is great but Twitter isn’t just a platform for spewing out our thoughts. Being engaged as a member of a community/group or building one is about developing relationships and automation RARELY does that. One thing to put a post or two from a blog into my twitter timeline but too many folks are dumping 3 spammish/google alert type messages into the Twittersphere each hour.
I’ve automated my personal e-mail with tons of rules in the last month (due to the sheer abundance of info I get from various information sources) and that will prove useful once I get in a habit of developing a routine. I find I consistently only read the inbox and miss looking out for a few people’s emails.
Dan Ross
http://www.Twitter.com/BetterBizIdeas
Srinivas Rao says on July 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I love the idea of automation. I use alot of wordpress plugins to automate certain things.
Armen Shirvanian says on July 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
The point behind this post was one I was glad to be reminded of. It makes sense to take 10 minutes a day to do things that would save 2 hours during the day. When I am reminded of this, it leads me to act on it and automate or organize during that day.
Also, to Clint from the first comment, I think it is cool when someone notices a detail like that.
Vincent says on July 2nd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Hi Paul,
Automation is definitely a great way to get things done in a more efficient way. However if there are tasks that are not providing much value yet there is no way to automate it, outsourcing is the way to go.
Cheers,
Vincent
Tehseen | RechargeYourMind says on July 2nd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Automation can definitely provide value but I think we have already automated much of our lives. To some extent, we should actually make certain tasks manual again so we can get the pleasure of doing stuff back.
Daniel Pope says on July 3rd, 2009 at 5:24 am
You can add your blog feed to Facebook without going through Twitter. Facebook posts your articles as notes to your wall.
Bill Clark says on July 4th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Dan, while I agree that Twitterfeed is quickly being associated with spammers, if it is used responsibly it can be a great tool.
The majority of Twitterfeed uses I’ve seen are just regurgitation of RSS feeds of someone’s favorite sites and whatnot, but a decent blogger can use it without adding clutter and spam.
For example, if I were to use Twitterfeed, I would use my personal account to tweet new blog posts. I use that account to participate in conversations with friends and followers, so an occassional tweet about a new blog post doesn’t seem like spam to me.
While I don’t use Twitterfeed at this time because I’m a fairly new blogger and I’m not doing a high volume of work right now, I can appreciate it as a valuable tool for a busy blogger.
Travis says on July 5th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Automation is obviously going to be a strong point for anyone who does any kind of blogging or web work. For a 1 time price of having to set it up, it continues to take care of you and control redundant tasks, freeing up your time for more important things.
Omar says on July 6th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Thanks for the tips. I didn’t know about twitterfeed. Timothy Ferris mentions automation in his book “The Four Hour Workweek”.
Eric Roberts says on July 8th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
As a developer I have a tendency to want to write a script for everything I need to automate. 9 times out of 10 there’s already something that does what I need. Always do a quick Google search first to see if something exists before you implement it yourself.
Greg says on July 11th, 2009 at 4:15 am
Clint is right. You need an even number of gears in a setup like that or the last one with be moving the opposite direction as the first one.
Greg says on July 11th, 2009 at 4:17 am
Very good point Eric. I also have “Not Invented Here” syndrome or a tendency to re-invent the wheel.