Automation is brilliant. In today’s modern world, we rely on all kinds of technology to help us automate the things we do. After all, who wants to spend all day repeating the same tasks over and over? Automation helps us to be more productive in what we do and clear our to-do lists much quicker.
If you’re new to automation though, it’s likely you are wondering how it can help you and with what. Here are examples of some of the things I do each day that make my life easier:
Make your bills pay themselves with automatic bill payments. If you run a business, you will seldom have the time to sift through piles of bills and pay them all in one day. After all; you’ve got plenty of other work you need to do as well, some of which may take a higher priority.
Did you know you can automate the task of paying your bills? It’s quite simple; you just use your bank’s automatic bill payment service. If the payments you make are the same each month, you can get your bank to pay them for you. Automatic bill payments can get set up using your bank’s online banking service. Or, if you prefer, you can do things the old-fashioned way and have your local branch set them up for you.
Set up scheduling tasks on your computer. Let’s face it; when we use our PCs or Macs, we seldom have the time to maintain our systems. We just switch them on, use them, and turn them off when we’re done. It’s essential that you perform maintenance tasks on your computer every so often. The best way to do this is by scheduling maintenance tasks. The things you can schedule include:
- Antivirus scans;
- Hard drive defragmentation; and
- Cleanup of temporary files and your Web browser cache.
You can schedule those tasks to occur one evening a week so that your work doesn’t get disrupted in the day. And, you can even have the schedulers turn your computer off when the tasks are complete.
Get technology to remind people about their appointments. One thing I hate doing is chasing up people that want to have a meeting with me. A life hack that I found useful is email reminder software. The way that it works is simple:
- It hooks into your computer’s calendar;
- It sends people reminder emails about meetings and appointments; and
- You don’t have to do a thing
It’s much quicker than sending “just checking you’re still free for our meeting” emails. And, it means I can concentrate on other important work on my to-do list.
Automate and organize your digital files at the same time. Are you someone that edits and saves many files each day? If so, giving them random file names is a bad idea, as is saving everything to one folder.
A better idea is to organize your content according to their types or projects. You guessed it; there’s software available that you can use for that specific purpose. On my Mac, I use some software called Automator. It’s built into OS X and it allows me create workflows or “macros” to handle repetitive tasks. There are Windows apps that can do that as well.
Sounds easy enough? Now… off to fun-landia with automation.
Photo by William Iven
Mia Guerra
Latest posts by Mia Guerra (see all)
- Five Wedding Details You Shouldn’t Forget While Planning - July 17, 2023
- Essential Considerations When Planning an Extension - July 17, 2023
- Easy Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint and Contribute to a Greener World - July 17, 2023
