2.2. Automate (But, Small Things First)¶

Everybody would agree that automation is the key to productivity. We need to automate; everything. And it makes sense, when you automate something, effectively your effort becomes almost 0.

$Productivity = \frac {Output} {E\!f\!f\!ort}$

Productivity is output divided by effort. It’s simple mathematics, if ${E\!f\!f\!ort} \to 0$ then, $Productivity \to \infty$ . In words, if effort is almost zero, productivity would be very high (close to infinity).

So, here is the question, what would you prioritize first for automation? Would you automate something that takes huge manual effort, or something takes relatively less time when you do it manually? The long running work is manual, and saving efforts there seems to be possible choice. But, the choice of answer to this question may not be so simple.

It may feel counter-intuitive, but probably automating small things may give you a better productivity boost.

It would be very easy for you to notice the things that take a long time for you to accomplish. There may be something that you feel is very boring or monotonous. This would be the first thing that you will notice. This may be the first thing on which you want to jump. There is a very high probability that you would like to automate these things first, before anything else.

Before jumping on this, you must see the economics of the situation. If you have to do something 20-30 times today, assuming it takes roughly half a minute or 30 seconds of your manual effort and attention. Can you give some thought as to exactly how much time do you spend on such activities?

Assuming there’s an activity takes average 30 seconds and you need to do it 20-30 times in a day, you would think it’s hardly 15 minutes of your day. But this is where you are a little bit short-sighted. On one hand, 15 minutes daily makes a significant impact on your weekly, monthly, yearly efforts. But you have forgotten about the elephant in the room, context switch

If those activities are automated, then it would hardly take one second of your attention. And you now magically have 15 more minutes in your life, today, and every day. See, time is money. This approach will also save you the penalty of context switch.

Now you may ask what are these things that you end up doing 30 times in a single day? Let’s move on to the next section.