Automate the Boring Thing First
Joseph Salinas
When people hear "automation," they picture something enormous. Robots. Artificial intelligence. A two-year project with a budget that makes their eyes water.
So they wait.
And while they wait, someone on their team spends forty-five minutes every single morning copying yesterday's orders into a spreadsheet.
Here's a better way to think about it: automation is just teaching a computer to do the boring parts of a job. That's it. You don't need to transform the company. You need to get rid of one boring thing. Then another.
The three-question test
Not sure what qualifies? Run any task through these three questions:
- Does it happen over and over?
- Does it work the same way every time?
- Is it mostly moving information from one place to another?
Three yeses means a computer can do it. And probably should.
Copying email attachments into a folder. Sending the same status update every Friday. Turning one system's report into another system's entry. Boring, repetitive, predictable. Perfect.
Small wins pay big
A boring thirty-minute daily task adds up to about 125 hours a year. That's three full weeks of work, gone — from one task. Most businesses are sitting on five or six of these.
But time isn't even the best part. Boring work is where mistakes live. Nobody misses a decimal because the job was too hard. They miss it because it was too dull to hold their attention. Automate the dull thing and the mistakes leave with it.
Your people will notice, too. Nobody ever quit a job because the interesting work disappeared.
Why you start small
The first automation isn't really about the hours. It's proof.
It proves to your team that things can actually get better. It proves to you what automation looks like in your business, before you bet anything big on it. Momentum starts with one boring thing.
Find yours this week
Ask your team one question: "What's the most repetitive thing you do every week?"
They'll answer instantly. Everyone knows their boring thing.
Pick one. Automate it. Then watch how fast people start pointing at the next one.