Automation
Automation basics¶
Automation means a job runs without you starting it each time. It's the last step, not the first: automate only what you've already done manually with AI and trust.
The honest promotion path¶
Each step earns the next. Most people try to jump from 1 to 4 — that's where the horror stories come from.
What's actually worth automating¶
Good candidates are frequent, boring, and checkable: weekly report drafts, sorting incoming files, first-pass replies, meeting summaries. Bad candidates are rare, high-stakes, or fuzzy: anything legal, anything involving money, anything you'd struggle to check.
The one design rule¶
Every automation needs an answer to: "What happens when it fails?" Because it will — an input will be weird, a service will be down. If your answer is "I get a message and the job waits for me," you're fine. If it's "nothing, it just keeps going," stop and fix that first.
Go deeper¶
- Plan a workflow — the 7 boxes every automation needs.
- Make it reliable — the failure-proofing checklist, in plain words.
- Ideas to steal — starter automations ranked by risk.
If this helped
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