To Automate or Not to Automate?

I would describe myself as a cautious fan of automation.  I love automation, but that comes with a huge dollop of hesitation.  And so, I often ask the question “To automate or not to automate?”.  Because automating things comes with the benefit of removing the need for any input from you.  This can be a huge time saver.  BUT, automation removes the intentionality of human input and that has some huge risks involved.

What do we mean by automation?

In every day life and work, automation means the process by which tasks are completed automatically by a computer or machine, or by which things are organised automatically by a machine.  This is as opposed to being done manually by a person.

For example, you could set up Direct Debits to pay recurring bills.  So, your utility bills, or your credit card bill, all get paid automatically and you don’t ever need to think about these.  It just happens. 

If you think about it, setting up ‘recurring tasks’ in your task manager, is an automation.  You complete the Task in ToDoist and ToDoist automatically changes the due date based on your criteria. 

But there are more complex examples of automation out there.  For example, I have seen an automation set up whereby a person will set up a means of recording a meeting and that recording is automatically sent to a transcribing service to create a written transcript of the whole meeting.  That transcript is then automatically run through Chat GPT to produce a summary and action points and then the written summary is automatically sent to a notes app, with the action point automatically being created in a task manager. 

Again, you have apps like Motion, that promise to automatically schedule all of your tasks based on available time slots and thus plan the perfect day for you.

All of this sounds amazing, but for me, it still begs the question – to automate or not to automate?

The benefits of automation – when it works

A lot of automation is good, hence I love it.  Automatically recurring tasks saves you having to remember to do it manually and saves the time it would take to do so.  Automatically paying bills can also be a blessing in saving you time.  I have other useful little automations set up.  I have one that automatically creates a task in ClickUp for every task I create in ToDoist.  Why, because ToDoist‘s quick capture is much faster and less obtrusive than ClickUp’s.  So, I use this and then harness the automation to get stuff into ClickUp.  I used to have an automation that would copy article highlights and notes out of Instapaper and into Evernote.  This is something I miss now I use UpNote.

Automations are good because they save you time in actually doing things.  They are also good when they remove your own memory from the equation.  The purpose of a good system of productivity and knowledge management is that it removes the need for things to be stored in your head.  Having to remember to do something, like change a tasks due date when you complete it or copy highlights from articles to your notes app, is a risk that automation can eliminate.

The cost of automating too much

The problem with automation comes when we use it to think for us.  Or, it becomes so complex that it is difficult to predict exactly how it might work and the time cost in setting up is extremely high.  The other risk is when we become dependent on it so if it breaks in some way, we cannot exist without it.

I do not like the idea of apps like Motion. 

These are the apps that automatically schedule your tasks and your time.  The reason I do not like them is because the output they produce is only as good as the input they get.  And, the input they get, and the way they handle that, will never be as good as you will. 

Therefore, the output you get from Motion will never be good as what you could come up with yourself. 

Motion will not know that you woke up with a headache, or slept really badly and so tasks that are cognitively less demanding are the order of the day.  Motion cannot know that the meeting you have today is going to be difficult and demanding and so the slots after it need to be lighter. 

More to the point though, it is my firm view that a key part of being effective in life, is actually being intentional in deciding what matters and acting accordingly.  Pass all this off to automation and that element of intentional planning is totally stripped away.

Once upon a time, I tried using Notion for everything.  Including task management.  I used a brilliant automation designed by Thomas Frank as apart of this for recurring tasks. 

I cannot stress enough how thankful I am to Thomas for all the work he put into to developing this and setting everything up to make it easy for people to use. 

Then, Notion upgraded their formulas to Formulas 2.0 and the whole thing broke. 

I feel for Thomas so much over this.  I cannot begin to imagine how many emails he got from people who’s whole system was now no longer working. 

My system was dependant on this automation for recurring tasks.  This automation stopped working for about a month or more.  So, my system stopped working.  It was dependent on the automation.  This was really bad.

Then take the example of the meeting notes and actions automation I described.  Do we really want to entrust the whole process of typing up meeting notes and determining actions to an AI machine?  I fear that without a human examining the notes and actions, that we run the risk of giving away too much to automations.

So, to automate or not to automate?

That is the question.  I have a few basic rules of thumb.

1. I will not automate anything that I think will benefit from my own input.  I automate paying utility bills and rent, but not my credit card as I want to be on top of what I am spending on this, as I can control it.
2. I will not automate ‘thinking’.  Therefore, I will not allow things like automatic scheduling of my time.
3. I will not allow my system to become dependant on 3rd party automations.
   • So, the recurring tasks function of ToDoist or ClickUp is a 1st party automation as it is built into the app I use, but to automate recurring tasks in Notion requires a 3rd party automation using Make.com or something similar.
4. I will automate if doing so removes a regular dependency on me remembering something.  E.g. I would automate sending notes and highlights from books and articles to my notes app if I could.
5. I will automate if it saves me time of regular ‘leg work’ for managing and organising my system.  For example, I set up automatic filters in Gmail, recurring reminders and tasks etc.

Automation can be very powerful, but over reliance on it an be problematic.

So, my wisdom would be this.  Love automations and use automations.  But do so cautiously.

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