I’m starting a series about bringing automation to your daily lives. Repetition is all around us, why not cut out as much of this repetition as possible so that you have more time available to do things you’d rather be doing. For me, I’m finally able write posts for blogs like this one, and so much more after automating everything.
Table of Contents
This series will offer tutorials for using software such as Keyboard Maestro as well as tools already built into your operating system, whether it’s iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Android, or Windows. It’ll cover things from eliminating repetitive computer tasks to home automation.
Stay tuned to GTWebs for tutorials in the weeks to come!
The Automation Mindset
The golden rule of automation is simple: if you do something more than twice, automate it. This applies to everything from file organization to deployment pipelines to email responses. The time you invest in setting up automation pays dividends forever.
As a developer, you have an unfair advantage over most people — you can write code to eliminate repetitive work. A marketing manager might spend 30 minutes every Monday compiling a report. A developer can write a script that does it in 30 seconds and schedule it to run automatically.
Where to Start: Low-Hanging Fruit
Don’t try to automate everything at once. Start with the tasks that are:
- Frequent: Tasks you do daily or weekly
- Predictable: Tasks that follow the same steps every time
- Time-consuming: Tasks that take more than 5 minutes each occurrence
- Error-prone: Tasks where manual mistakes are costly
Common automation targets include: file backups, database dumps, log rotation, report generation, deployment processes, email filtering, and data entry.
Shell Scripts: Your First Automation Tool
Every developer should be comfortable writing shell scripts. A simple bash script can automate complex multi-step workflows:
#!/bin/bash
# Daily backup script
DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
tar -czf /backups/project-$DATE.tar.gz /var/www/project/
find /backups -mtime +30 -delete
echo "Backup completed: $DATE"
The GNU Bash manual is the definitive reference for shell scripting. Combined with cron jobs (scheduled tasks), shell scripts can automate virtually any server-side process.
CI/CD: Automating Your Development Workflow
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is automation applied to the software development lifecycle. Tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins can automatically:
- Run your test suite on every pull request
- Lint and format your code to enforce style guidelines
- Build and deploy your application when changes merge to main
- Send notifications to Slack when deployments succeed or fail
- Generate release notes automatically from commit messages
If you’re not using CI/CD yet, start with GitHub Actions — it’s free for public repositories and has thousands of pre-built actions in the marketplace.
No-Code Automation Tools
You don’t always need to write code to automate. Tools like Zapier, Make (formerly Integromat), and Apple’s Shortcuts can connect services and automate workflows visually:
- Automatically save email attachments to Google Drive
- Post to social media when you publish a blog post
- Create Trello cards from form submissions
- Send yourself a daily digest of RSS feeds
The ROI of Automation
Here’s a practical framework: if a task takes 5 minutes per day and you automate it in 2 hours, you break even in 24 working days — about one month. After that, it’s pure time savings forever. Over a year, that 5-minute daily task would have consumed 21 hours. Over five years, over 100 hours.
The real benefit goes beyond time savings. Automation eliminates human error, ensures consistency, and frees your mental energy for creative, high-value work instead of routine drudgery.
For more automation strategies and developer productivity tips, visit GTWebs — we build tools and share techniques for working smarter.
