Do you know how to automate tasks? Do you want to make your workflow easier to reduce stress?
Unfortunately, in many cases, simple tasks that you need to do regularly take up a great deal of time that you’d prefer to spend on more meaningful work. In Free to Focus, Michael Hyatt says that automation offers a powerful solution to this problem.
Let’s review three areas where automation can significantly reduce your mental load and boost your productivity.
1. Automating Your Daily Tasks
Hyatt’s first strategy for learning how to automate tasks is what he calls self-automation, which focuses on creating consistent habits and routines in your daily life. This strategy ensures that you complete simple-but-important tasks efficiently and frees your mind to focus on more meaningful issues.
For instance, if you wake up at the same time every morning, then shower, shave, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, and leave for work—in that order—pretty soon that routine will become a habit, and you’ll carry it out more or less automatically. This means that, while you’re carrying out your morning routine, you can be thinking ahead and planning how you’ll tackle that day’s tasks and challenges.
Additional Benefit: Automating Your Mindset
Hyatt adds that another reason to create routines is because habits also serve as cues for you to get into certain mindsets.
If you always start your workday by, say, checking your emails, then opening your inbox will subconsciously signal to you that it’s time to be focused and productive. Similarly, a consistent end-of-day habit (perhaps turning off your work computer at the same time each day) will let your mind know that it’s time to stop thinking about work. This will free you up to focus on other important activities like resting or spending time with your family.
Performing small rituals like these throughout the day will help you automatically shift into the right mindsets at the right times. This will enable you to be fully present and engaged with whatever you’re currently doing.
| How Habits Work In Atomic Habits, Clear outlines the four stages of habits to explain why we often find ourselves repeating the same behaviors over and over, whether they’re beneficial or harmful for us. These stages are: 1. Cue: The trigger that initiates your behavior. Continuing the above example, if your workday ends at 5:00, then seeing that time displayed on the clock is the cue for your end-of-day habits. 2. Craving: What the cue prompts you to do. In this case, it makes you want to turn off your computer and be with your family. 3. Response: The actual action or actions you perform (turning off your computer and starting your commute back home). 4. Reward: The benefit you gain from performing the habit. Following Hyatt’s reasoning, the reward here is that you now get to enjoy spending time with your loved ones at home. This framework also helps to explain why habits stick, and why trying to create new habits often fails. Clear says that, for a habit to form successfully, it needs to be obvious (cue), attractive (craving), easy (response), and satisfying (reward). Noticing that it’s 5:00, turning off your computer, and enjoying the reward of fulfilling time with your family certainly meets all of those criteria—therefore, it’s an effective habit that will help get you in the right mindset for the rest of the day. |
2. Automating Your Communication
Hyatt’s second automation method is what he calls template automation. This involves creating standardized responses and outlines for common situations, allowing you to communicate quickly and efficiently. For example, you might develop email templates for frequent types of requests rather than having to write every email from scratch, or create standard presentation formats for regular meetings—then you’d only need to worry about what information you’re presenting, not how to present it.
Investing time upfront to create high-quality templates not only saves time in the long run, but often results in clearer, more professional communications. This is because you can carefully craft and refine your templates over time, then simply fill them out as needed for each individual situation. Such templates also minimize the risk that you’ll make mistakes like leaving out important information or accidentally saying something rude.
(Shortform note: Automating your communications like Hyatt suggests may not work for some entrepreneurs, as it risks you losing your customers’ sense of personal connection and therefore their trust. In Permission Marketing, marketing expert Seth Godin recommends bypassing the templates and scripts, and reaching out personally when selling expensive items. He acknowledges that a personal touch isn’t feasible when you’re communicating with a lot of people—but, when it comes to individual customers making high-value purchases, building a personal relationship is often the difference between making the sale and losing that customer to one of your competitors.)
3. Automating Your Workflow
Finally, you can streamline your workflow using what Hyatt terms technical automation: leveraging apps and digital tools to handle repetitive tasks for you, thereby minimizing the time and energy you spend on them. For example, in a typical office setting you might encounter automation tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software, which handles data entry and transfer between systems, as well as email automation tools that sort, filter, and send pre-written responses to common inquiries.
The author urges you to focus on figuring out what types of tools will help you simplify your work, rather than which specific tools you want to use. Identifying the core functions that you want to automate will help you to stay flexible enough to adapt as technology evolves. This is important because individual tools could be replaced with newer versions, old apps might be incompatible with newer hardware or operating systems, or a developer might simply decide to stop supporting a specific tool you rely on.
| Tip: Don’t Try to Use Too Many Tools Another reason to limit yourself to identifying core functions to automate, rather than trying to incorporate a lot of specific tools into your workflow, is that using too many apps can hinder productivity instead of boosting it. Research indicates that excessive app use can actually decrease productivity by up to 40%, according to studies in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. This is because each app you introduce has its own learning curve and because you must constantly shift your attention from one piece of software to another. When you’re constantly switching between numerous different tools, this adds up to a massive drain on your time, mental energy, and productivity. Finding the right balance of tools to maximize productivity will most likely take time and experimentation. However, following Hyatt’s advice by choosing the important tasks you want automated will put you on the right track. |
