Re:Ask HN: Do you automate most of your routine tasks?
by itcmcgrath on Thursday March 31, 2011 @06:48AM
(#2391034)
Exactly. Unless you have what "some time" is, how can you possibly justify something. It all boils down to ROI and risk (including mental sanity).
That said, I would always err on the side of automating - at least some of the tasks. Take the low hanging fruit and tackle those first.
For example, I send out a weekly report containing a bunch of metrics sourced from our website monitoring tool. It took me a couple of days to automate that, but it saves me a good hour every week (and means I don't make mistakes copying and pasting figures which I used to with alarming regularity). It also means that my Monday mornings can start immediately without pounding through a repetitive task.