Automatic for the people
In order to succeed in projects we are expected to be efficient in our work. Too many people think that this automatically translates as “don’t do anything but work and do everything in a hurry”. That’s not the case.
Forbes’s blog post “9 Habits of Productive People” suggests eg. the following items:
- Cut your to-do list in half. Getting things done during your workday shouldn’t mean fitting in doing as much as possible in the sanctioned eight hours.
- Follow the 80/20 rule. Only 20 percent of what you do each day produces 80 percent of your results.
Of course, it’s easy to say this. Be more efficient by working less. But what if you have a lot of mandatory tasks that you just can’t drop? Maybe you should consider automating them.
For instance, Sikuli Script is an easy open-source way to automate tedious tasks. Whatever is on the screen, it’s probable that Sikuli can interact with it. If you have a manual task that could be done by a robot, why not try exactly that?
As demonstrated by the marvelous web comic XKCD you can spend a surprisingly significant time on automating your task before you stop saving time in the long run.
We automate test cases all the time and those cases emulate our real work. Why leave it only at that?
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Hi Tuomas,
I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment here, which is why we have been creating software in my business for over a decade for businesses from local mechanical specialists to global fashion retailers, medical businesses, financial giants and even government.
The thing is the article is a little general. Tell me more about specific use-cases, using databases to save time entering repetitive information, implementing standards compliance SW etc and I think it might encourage more engagement. Lovely article, a little short…
Hi Lewis,
I agree that the article is general, I guess I just tried to awaken the sentiment of “why not automate your redundant tasks” but your idea of describing more specific use cases is great! I’ll tackle these in my future posts.
Cheers,
Tuomas
[…] *This article was previously published in Sogeti Labs […]
Higher wages, less redundancy can help to grow alternative industries like leisure, publishing, leisure sports.
Fewer workers and broader activites more likely to build shared prosperity and high quality of life than the same mice chasing the same piece of cheese that isn’t large enough to feed all.