At what point do you decide to automate a task?

[Loadingscreen]

I was talking with a mate of mine who automates everything with AI. He even got into vibe coding even though he’s never done a lick of coding in his life before this.

It got me thinking but when you work on something, at what point do you decide to use automation? Do you try to learn it first and do it manually or do you just jump straight to automating it?

 

[roydan]

If I need to do it many times
If it required more time than I can justify investing it it
If I can scale it up by automating it
If automation can objectively improve the results

It's about the same to me as spending money to save time.

 

[t2van]

I was talking with a mate of mine who automates everything with AI. He even got into vibe coding even though he’s never done a lick of coding in his life before this.

It got me thinking but when you work on something, at what point do you decide to use automation? Do you try to learn it first and do it manually or do you just jump straight to automating it?

Agree with @roydan we only automate if it's repetative or need to sort a ton of data in a complex way*


*note due to my recent staff hire choices for admin work "complex" can be just copy from Cell A to Cell D

 

[Rem]

when its something that has to be done more than once
regardless of x intervals.
or something that needs to be triggered thru xyz conditions.
most "single-task" work i just smash thru it myself