# The Art of Automation

DevFeed: [The Art of Automation](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-art-of-automation-35199.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/the-art-of-automation/>)

Published: 2020-04-18T13:09:26Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Jessie Frazelle](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/jessie-frazelle.md>)

Topics: [Automation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/automation.md>), [Script](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/script.md>), [API](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/api.md>)

Tags: [automate](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automate.md>), [automation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automation.md>), [tasks](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tasks.md>)

## AI overview

An essay about automating repetitive tasks to save time and improve productivity. It discusses personal automation practices, common patterns in tools such as Apple's Shortcuts, home automation, and IFTTT, and the tradeoff between automation effort and future manual work and maintenance.

## Source excerpt

I am unsure if my love of automation comes from a dislike of doing the same thing twice or an overall desire to be more productive and make everything more efficient. Like a lot of programmers, I often ask myself "can this be scripted" when I find myself doing a manual task. I was inspired recently by reading Wolfram's writing on his personal infrastructure for productivity1. I, too, have written about my personal infrastructure2, but not at the level of depth or with the same focus on productivity as Wolfram. There is no time like the present to take another swing at it! Not only do I want to touch on some of the ways I have automated tasks in my life, I also want to spend some time unpacking how common automation patterns are starting to appear in a lot of things people use day to day. Apple's Shortcuts, home automation, and IFTTT make automation patterns available to the masses in a way that is unprecedented. Before diving into the details, let's first answer the question of why. Why automate? Time is one of the most valuable resources in the world. If there was something you could do to free more time for yourself, why wouldn't you? When I automate myself out of a task I transfer the burden of doing said task to some other script, service, API, or a combination of all of these. I, personally, feel at my best and most productive when I am building something, solving a problem, or learning something new. In none of those situations does that include "doing something manual that could otherwise be scripted/automated away." Or when it does... I automate it away. In any circumstance when I find myself in a position to automate something, I will automate it. Especially if I consider the time spent automating the task to be less than any time spent in the future doing the task manually. This is the ultimate pay off: time. I like to think of automation as the following equation. $$ \begin{equation} time \ gained = (time \ doing \ task \ manually) - (time \ to \ automate \