Completing a tasks, documenting the problem and what you did to solve it serves as a kind of automation for the future. Anyone can read it and pattern match to the situation before carrying out the sames set of tasks to fix it again. This also ends up becoming research or a spec for how to automate the task programmatically (a higher order form of automation).
See also:
- Automation of even low-level tasks is an example of compounding interest
- Humans are the great interop layer
Links to this note
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Every Infrastructure Decision I Endorse or Regret
Inspired by (Almost) Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret, I thought it would be interesting to do the same for my startup.
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The Second Time, Write it Down
If you do something more than once, write down the steps taken to complete the task. Chances are, if you have to do something twice, you’ll need to repeat it more times later.
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Documentation as Customer Success
Self-serve businesses that sell complicated software (like an API) can use documentation as a way of augmenting or replacing customer success. For example, early Stripe did not have sales or support but created outstanding technical documentation that was always available—you didn’t need to schedule a call to discuss implementation or answer questions, you could figure it out yourself.
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How Long Should You Spend Automating Tasks?
This chart, adapted from xkcd, tells you the amount of time saved over 5 years based on how much time you are able to shave off of the task. For example, a task that you do daily that you are able to reduce by 30 minutes will save 5 weeks of time over 5 years. This chart can also tell you how much time you should spend on trying to optimize so you don’t spend more time than it’s worth.
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Automation Reduces Marginal Cost of Nonautomated Tasks
In a recent study, researches looked at the effects of automation on in a supermarket. They found that by automating the process of collecting payment, productivity of the non-automated task of scanning items increased 10%. An explanation for the improvement is that automation enabled specialization and specialization reduces the marginal cost of the other tasks which increases effort and therefore productivity.