Do you automate a lot of professional/personal tasks?

July 21, 2018

Disclosure: I'm a growth consultant and working as a community specialist at Integromat, a workflow automation tool like Zapier but a lot more versatile and powerful.

Besides businesses, a lot of individuals use our product to automate mundane/repetitive tasks but are primarily on the free plan. Question is, how many of you awesome hackers automate your stuff using free/paid tools and what is that 1 task that you'd never want to do manually?

Arpit Choudhury

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Question is, how many of you awesome hackers automate your stuff using paid tools and what is that 1 task that you'd never want to do manually?

The principle of running a business, for me, is:
1. Figure out how to get a certain result (attract customers, convert, follow-up, idea generation, ... everything).
2. Prove my assumptions: Achieve the result.
3. Turn my work into a repeatable process.
4. Automate the process or hire someone to do it for me.
I use Zapier for parts of the automation.

There are two reasons I would keep doing it myself:
1. I'm the best person for the job and I haven't found someone that's sufficient (yet - w/o being perfectionistic). I have a strong tech background, so this will be most of the tech decision-making, especially at the start.
2. High emotional value. It simply makes me happy or makes me feel fulfilled, and that is more valuable than any €€/hour.
and what is that 1 task that you'd never want to do manually?

Everything. Anything you do manually should be worth more than your time is worth per hour, otherwise you're losing. And not automating or hiring/outsourcing prevents you from working on new ideas and learning new things.

If a paid tool wants my money, it should do the automation perfectly, have a proven history of high availability, and be able to integrate naturally w/ my workflow.
Sébastien Vercammen

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8 years ago
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  Thanks for the awesome response Sebastian, appreciate it! In fact, I tell people that Integromat can 'connect anything and automate everything' so love that you think that everything should be automated!
  
  Arpit Choudhury
  
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  8 years ago
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    Unfiltered thoughts as I browse your site (should've made your "Integromat" name in the post a link):
    
    I like the concept of Integromat a lot. Big fan of the programmable higher layer. The pricing is also good enough to get me to try it (especially w/ free tier). (I say "good enough" because I don't have a more complex opinion right now w/o having tried it.)
    
    Data transfer limits seem a bit low. There are hosts (e.g. OVH) that give unlimited bandwidth (fair use policy, I believe), make use of that. Especially for $299/mo with 800k operations, only 220GiB feels silly.
    
    Internal data storage is INSANELY LOW. You can save bandwidth (see above) by storing files for future re-use, and storage is one of the cheapest components. So why does the $299 tier only have 500MiB? Red flag for me, this is a hard wall against the possibilities of my automation.
    
    Separate the text "Price per 10,000 extra operations or 10 GB of data transfer (Add-on)" in two different rows (one for operations, one for GiB), even if it's the same price. Feels like a cheap "I don't want to think about it too much" move if you combine them.
    
    Use correct units: GiB, MiB, ... instead of GB/MB. Unless you're really selling per 1000 instead of 1024.
    
    You have some obvious English mistakes, get someone to proofread/fix. E.g. "Help us, Help you" should be "Help us help you", and "What is operation, data transfer, and minimum interval?" -> "What are ..." (plural).
    
    Love the live progress view and editor example on the homepage.
    
    Your Templates should be much closer to "We have direct support for hundreds of apps and services". I saw your services and no follow-up to templates, so I thought it just wasn't on your homepage until I scrolled way down.
    
    The Templates button "Show all integrations" should say "Show all templates". "Integrations" makes me think of services, not templates.
    
    The templates shown on your homepage should be the TOP used templates that bring the highest return to your customers. You want to sell me on "Integromat = easy, fast return, and potential for more custom long-term".
    
    Maybe guide your customer by providing a storyline? E.g. you show me integrated services (OK), you then show me templates as a next step (OK), but if you'd have a button to click for my persona (my business use, e.g. automation for founders) then I'd instantly be convinced to pay because you've just given me a single button to click for ROI.
    
    Social proof (brand logos + "Integromat works for you 24/7") should be higher up, not the very last thing on your (quite long) webpage.
    
    Sébastien Vercammen
    
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    8 years ago
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      Wow that's a whole lot of useful feedback, appreciate it. We are in the process of making a lot of navigational changes but I'm going to relay this feedback to the team for sure!
      
      Arpit Choudhury
      
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      8 years ago
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There are many things that you won't do it manually because of the time it takes. But something should be done manually as you yourself should touch it.
For example, me as a social media manager give the posting option to a scheduler, to schedule the post on an appropriate time.
Or for gaining real Instagram followers for my clients' accounts, I use a bot to do it for me to buy time and do the jopbs sooner.

Diane Walker

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8 years ago
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  Agreed. Have you thought of doing the same for your personal tasks? Maybe something like sending yourself emails triggered by events on your social media accounts or setting automated reminders etc.
  
  Arpit Choudhury
  
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  8 years ago
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    Yep. why not. Something that makes your personal life easy among these crowds.
    
    Diane Walker
    
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    8 years ago
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