Automating recurring tasks is often worthwhile. There’s a great xkcd on this which focuses on whether the time spent automating something is worth the time saved.

But time savings is just one benefit of automation. For example, automation can also save energy and make it more likely that something actually gets done.

Things I automate often fall into one of these categories:

• Things that are time consuming
• Things that are error-prone when done manually
• Things that I do frequently, especially if they are annoying to do and take me out of the zone

My favorite automation tools are programming languages, but there are lots of automation tools that require no programming at all (e.g., email rules, saved searches, etc.).

When automating, I often start small. For instance, I might write a script to automate the most frustrating part of a process and later evolve it to do everything.