How would it make you feel if you could get work done in your sleep or while you’re grabbing drinks with friends? And what if I told you that that’s actually much easier as it sounds, regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur or if you work in a 9-5 job?
Hint: It feels awesome when you wake up and there’s already work done and waiting for you. And this doesn’t have to be hard or cost thousands of dollars.
So what is this sorcery that helps us get work done in our sleep and doesn’t require us to own our own team of people or clone ourselves? This sorcery is called automation, and I know just the right person to show you how to learn the art of automation. You will learn the magic of creating systems that run on their own and get work done for you, regardless of what you’re doing and how motivated you are.
This person with a magic wand is my good friend Frank from Amp Your Results. He’s the person I go to whenever I want to automate something or make my systems run smoother, because he has knows exactly which tools to use to create awesome systems that run on their own.
Frank was very generous and agreed to write a very detailed post just for the readers of Skyrocket Your Productivity that will show you the basics of automation and answer these questions:
- What is this automation thing?
- How does it look like in action?
- What can I automate in my own life?
- How do I even get started with automation?
- Which tools can I use to automate with very little effort?
So without further ado, I’ll let you read Frank’s post. Happy automation!
-Primoz
Enter Frank:
Don’t work uphill. Life’s already pretty tough, ESPECIALLY for ambitious people.
If you’ve been relying on your discipline to achieve your greatest goals and you’ve failed — there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Your approach is what’s throwing you off. You’ve been working uphill. There’s a smarter way.
Take it from the people you know in your life who always seem to be productive no matter what. Isn’t it frustrating? You could be working 100x harder than they are, but they seem to pull further ahead! We can do this too by learning HOW they do it.
It’s not genetics. It’s not money. It’s not the breaks. It’s not even being surrounded by successful people… how do you think they became successful to begin with? It’s their habits and mindsets that got them there.
Here’s what I’ve learned from these successful people:
The only way to make consistent progress on your goals is by building and improving the systems in your life and eventually automating those systems
Take Honda for example. How long do you think they would last if they had every car built by hand? That’d be ridiculous – no two cars would look the same, the workers’ energy would be SHOT after a few months of this strenuous work, and they wouldn’t even be able to get very many cars out the door in time.
So what do they do? They’ve built automated systems to build these cars with precision and very little (human) energy.
If a company has capitalized on systems and automation to make THEIR success easier to achieve with less energy from their employees, why are YOU, the CEO of your life, allowing your “company” to work uphill?
It’s just not the way to live.
- What systems and automation are and why you should care
- What your life can look like once you’ve automated the boring out of it
- How you can ease into your work without scurrying around for what you need to get started
- The systems and automation mindsets that will help you pave a smoother path to your goals
- Action items you’ll be taking after this article to get started (you’ll only choose one and it’ll take 5-10 minutes to get started depending on how fast you can click)
- The tools and services you can start using to get started TODAY
My goal is to give you a few different angles on how to approach your work and your chores. I want you to walk away from this thinking “How can I make this repetitive task easier? How can I automate this thing that I do every day anyway?”
Now we could get started with examples, but I don’t think you’ll benefit long term. Sure, I could teach you how to build specific systems, but then you may not be able to do this on your own. You’d walk away, have a cute little system, but then never know how to REALLY bring home the results. So let’s cover the fundamentals first.
You know the old saying “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day… teach a man how to build an automatic fish snare contraption, feed his entire village for centuries.”
Get it together, buddy.
A DAY IN THE AUTOMATED LIFE
“This sounds awesome. But what would MY life look like with automation?”
Let me take you through a day in my life to give you an example.
The other day, I started the day brushing my teeth, shaving, applying deodorant, you know – the hygienic works. Part way into getting ready, I found that my deodorant stick was on its last legs. I snapped a picture of it and upload it to Dropbox, which triggered my IFTTT recipe (more on this later). Later that day, I would get an email confirmation from my Fancy Hands virtual assistant that they purchased the deodorant for me at the lowest price possible online.
I went to the kitchen and prepared some scrambled eggs, yerba mate tea, and vitamin complex. I haven’t successfully automated these yet* but I’m getting there.
I was starting to run low on yerba mate, so I snapped a picture of it and uploaded it to Dropbox, which triggered my IFTTT recipe. It forwarded the photo to Fancy Hands as well as instructions on how to find it for the best price online. They found it for me and sent me the links to it a few days later.
Note: I created this IFTTT recipe when Fancy Hands’ payment processor went down. Since they couldn’t buy it for me directly, I had them price hunt for me, which still saves me time and energy. Their processor is up and running again today, so my new IFTTT recipe will have them buy it for me.
A screenshot of my computer before I sit down to write.
This was the email I got from Fancy Hands, with notes for proofreading.
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I got to work and sat at my desk. Again, all the tools I needed were already there, including:
– My morning checklist, which reminds me to take some time to set up my workspace before I sit down, which includes sit down
– Anti-Social
– My playlist on Grooveshark – can you tell I love my music when I work?
– My timer program to start the day with a quick burst of work
My morning work script
Essentially, the mindset I use to automate is:
IF <commonly occurring situation>, THEN <pre-determined action>
IF I get a shipping notification, THEN move it to my Order Info folder.
IF I get a shipping notification that doesn’t contain IP, THEN send it to my Evernote.
Now, if my boss ever asks me for the receipts for certain purchases, I can either find it myself or have Fancy Hands find it for me in my Evernote.
Now it may be easy to dismiss some forms of automation as “cute” or “just for fun”. When I tell most of my clients and friends about how I automate buying stuff by just taking a photo of it, they usually say something like: “Well, that’s neat. But why not just write that you should buy it on your to-do list or shopping list?”
First, I personally like to minimize the number of errands I run. I don’t consider myself lazy, but if a task can be streamlined or automated, like grocery shopping, I’d prefer to automate it and spend that extra hour or two doing whatever I want to do. Second, sure, I could’ve added buying my yerba mate on my to-do list. But when you consider all the problems with putting a low-importance task on your to-do list, it’s worth it to automate it instead.
Think about how you work with your to-do list now… or any list for that matter. Have you ever avoided your to-do list just because it looks so intimidating? Tons of tasks vs. one you. If you have, you’re not alone. If you haven’t, you will soon.
Adding low-importance tasks like these “water down” your to-do list, making it more difficult to quickly see what’s important and what’s not. All you get is a long list of tasks. And long lists don’t get done.
Another subtle point is discussed in the book, The Paradox of Choice:
The more choices you have, the LESS likely you are to choose ANY of them (you procrastinate) and the MORE likely you’ll feel unsatisfied with your final choice.
Have you ever stared at your to-do list, knowing you should get started, but then go on Youtube or Facebook instead? Ever had a day when you only got one or two really important things done, but you STILL felt like you should’ve done more? Both are examples of this Paradox of Choice.
By automating these choices, you eliminate these psychological barriers.
BUILDING YOU, INC.: PERSONAL SYSTEMS AND AUTOMATION
Now let’s start implementing systems in your life. Before getting started, burn these three mindsets into the back of your mind. They’ll help you save tons of time and energy as you experiment.
1) Use your high-energy times to automate and systematize to make riding out your low-energy times easier.
2) Stop spending time converting bad results from ineffective systems into good results. Spend that time on building good systems and the good results will follow automatically.
3) Use automation & systemization to take advantage of Structural or Digital Willpower, both of which are infinite, instead to your own willpower, which is VERY finite.
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1) Use your high-energy times to automate and systematize to make riding out your low-energy times easier.
Everyone has “on” days, where you’re extraordinarily productive, knocking off long-scheduled to-dos. But sooner or later, we’re faced with the other side of our energy coin, the “off” day. Days when we’re mentally distracted and drained of energy.
The traditional approach to work is to work during our “on” days and feel guilty during our “off” days. This is a shortsighted strategy.
Instead, it’s wiser to spend your high-energy times to make it EASIER to get the job done once your motivation wanes. I write all about this mindset here.
And I promise you. Your motivation WILL eventually drop. It ebbs and flows for all of us. We’re not robots – we’re people. Energy cycles are real and they don’t always work the way we want them.
When you automate, you capitalize on that work for days to come. Think about one thing you’ve done over and over again. How would it feel if that task took HALF the time to complete because last month you made a system? How would it feel if it got done on its own because you automated it last week?
Compare the above graph to where you are right now. How much did last Monday contribute to your results today?
2) Stop spending time converting bad results from ineffective systems into good results. Spend that time on building good systems and the good results will follow automatically.
Too many people spend time at work tending to urgent tasks. But sometimes it feels like after you whack one urgent problem, two more pop up.
Now stay down!!!
Most times, just like it’s wisest to fix a hole in a ship first THEN bale out all the water, so too is it wiser to improve that system before you fix all the smaller problems. But let’s say you absolutely MUST tend to this one problem immediately.
Here’s what to do: Put a strict TIME LIMIT on how much time you spend fighting fires. Use my Flow Formula to achieve Flow as quickly as possible, set a timer for 25 minutes to work, take 5 minutes to rest, work for another 25 minutes, and let that be all the firefighting you do for the day.
Spend the rest of your day identifying WHY that fire started, identify the system that spawned that fire, and improve that system.
3) Use Systems & Automation to take advantage of spending Digital Willpower, which is infinite, instead of your willpower, which is finite.
We have a limited amount of willpower every day to spend on non-routine or emotional tasks. This is why dieters who rely on willpower typically break down around dessert time. They spent most of their willpower throughout the day RESISTING those foods they wanted!
A dieter who systematizes their diet may simply throw away all the junk food in their house, replace them with healthy snacks that they also enjoy, prepare 5 healthy lunches in their fridge, and leave their credit card at home when they go out.
This is “automation” in its purest form — through changing their habits. By taking these steps, they:
– Made it easier to do the behavior he/she doesn’t routinely do (i.e. eating healthy, eating her lunch)
– Made it harder to do the behavior he/she doesn’t WANT to do (i.e. harder to buy junk, harder to cave in the evening)
When you put barriers in place in real life, I call it Structural Willpower. When you use computers & software to accomplish the same thing, I call it Digital Willpower.
Another example: I can’t think of a situation where I wouldn’t want to pay my rent on time. So, rather than rely on my memory to pay that bill AND spend the time writing and mailing a check, I’ve automated my finances. I use my bank’s Bill Payment feature to automatically send my landlord a check every month on the day its due.
My benefits are two-fold: First, I don’t have to think about these payments and can instead focus on other important things in my life. Second, I’ve made it harder to NOT pay my rent. So naturally, I won’t NOT pay my rent.
TAKE ACTION TODAY — START IMPLEMENTING AUTOMATED SYSTEMS NOW!
To get you started, I want you to choose ONE of the following and do it RIGHT NOW.
1) Create an account on IFTTT, a service that connects two services together, and use one of my recipes to automate some of your work.
2) Sign up with my favorite virtual assistant service, Fancy Hands, and give them one task to complete for you.
3) Write out one procedure you’ve done at work on a repeated basis and save it to Google Drive or Evernote so you can get easy access to it.
If you’re stuck on which one to get started on, go ahead and start with #1 first. Why? Several reasons:
– I don’t want you getting into Analysis Paralysis by worrying about which one is “best” to get started on. You can always do the other two later – so let’s get started with one first.
– It’s REALLY easy to get started with IFTTT. It’s only takes 10-15 minutes, so there’s no excuse for “not having time”.
– You can get the results of automation immediately with little time invested. Small, quick victories are very important for motivation. And the better you feel about using automation in your own life, the more likely you’ll eventually do all three of the above.
– It’s a gateway into programming for those who have absolutely no programming experience. Writing code is probably one of the highest leverage skills you can learn to make things easier at work.
To help you get started, I’ve prepared my Automation Toolbox just for you.
Click the book below to get your own guide on getting started in automation, systems, and outsourcing.
Examples include:
- Where I find contractors to do minor work for $5 per job — tasks like writing code for me, designing logos, and other minor design work.
- Getting all your programs and apps you need in the morning to pop up automatically before you even sit down, like in my examples earlier.
- The formatting I use to create Playbooks that not only help me save time and energy on repetitive tasks, but also help me outsource those tasks when I don’t necessarily need to be the guy doing them.
I’m not affiliated with any of the services I’ve shared with you. I’ve just had a GREAT experience using that tool or service.
* Fun Fact: I had tested automating my breakfast every morning by using an outlet timer and placing eggs in a water boiler. Later, that was replaced with some Arduino-powered behemoth of a contraption. I really don’t suggest either to anyone who doesn’t want to be awoken by a fire alarm…
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Frank Magnotti is the founder of Amp Your Results, a new twist on productivity where automation and constraints are more powerful than sheer willpower and discipline.
Frank covers topics ranging from automation to psychology in a way that’s fun, easy to take action on, and use to prepare yourself for the next big leap in your life – be it a promotion, starting your new business, or leaping into a new career. |
Frank, a great article here!
Love learning from you about automation and systems. I’ve learned so much from you.
Thank you Primoz for hosting and all your systems knowledge and sharing.
Dobro odrađen posao! Čekam sljedeće članke.