Being a developer affords me the opportunity of bending technology to make my life easier. One thing that this ability has taught me is that we should “Automate Everything”. What exactly do I mean by that?
Instead of logging in, clicking on five things, remembering a sequence of events and passwords…just automate it. Write a script with clear notes and be done with it.
By automating your life, you..
1) Eliminate human error.
2) Make life easier for someone to come behind you to perform the same task.
3) Free your mind from remembering odd random steps to performing a task and allow it to do other stuff.
I’ve been doing a lot of iOS work lately and I have tried to apply this approach there and also at my day job.
Using tools like Rake, Shenzhen and AWS I can easily build my Xcode projects, publish an IPA to TestFlight and update backend configuration files all with a few keystrokes. If I had to do each of these tasks by hand we are talking tens of minutes which add up to hours over the course of project sprints. That is more time for me to be writing code, designing features and testing the actual product.
So my question for you is, what in your life can you automate? Maybe you are not a developer but just start with that question and the snowball will start racing down the mountain. And to help you, there are companies built entirely around this concept of automating your life and others sharing too.