How do you automate some routine actions for improving productivity?

Question

Every morning, after logging into your machine, you do a variety of routine stuffs. The list can include stuffs like opening/checking your email clients, rss readers, launching visual studio, running some business apps, typing some replies, getting latest version from Source Control, compiling, connecting to a different domain etc. To a big extend, we can automate using scripting solutions like AutoIt, nightly jobs etc.

I would love to hear from you geeks out there for the list of stuffs you found doing repeatedly and how you solved it by automating it. Any cool tips?

Answer 1

I use Linux. I have a bunch of scripts that do anything I want. Typically I write a script whenever a "block" of work can be reused in the future. For example, simple refactorings, deployments, etc...

Over time I started to combine these blocks, hence getting ever more efficient.

Regarding the "load stuff at startup", under Linux that comes out of the box (you can "save your current session" when you log out or turn off the computer).

On windows, my suggestion is to use programs that can be automated via command line.

Answer 2

A favorite way is to leave the computer on at night or better, if it's a laptop, put it to sleep. Running a web browsing virtual machine in VMware or similar works also, you can set the VM start along with the machine and save its state on shutdown, so your web pages and email client stay open. This works for development also if you're doing scripting or something similar where the performance hit of the VM on large compiles won't negate the benefits.

Answer 3

SlickRun is very handy for this, just a few keys to navigate to anything common and a very small footprint. With input variables and file path recognition all part of it I can quick remote desktop to any machine, search anything, pull up whatever's needed.

Answer 4

On OS X, I have an Applescript that I run at the beginning of the day. It sets an away message on IM, hides or quits programs that would distract me, gets new mail, and so forth. I also plug in my USB backup disk, so when I'm going home, another script ejects it and quits some programs. When the script is done, so am I.

I invoke these scripts with key combos using Quicksilver.

If you don't have a Mac, by the way, Quicksilver and Applescript are probably the #1 and #2 reasons to switch. Between the two of them, you can tell your computer to do practically anything you want in very short order.

Answer 5

Use a good app launcher such as Quicksilver or Launchy to cut down on the time it takes to perform simple tasks. They're usually not scriptable, but they do let you do each step faster.

Answer 6

Writing shell scripts (Applescript, Bash, PowerShell, etc..) is a great way to automate most mundane tasks, assuming your apps are scriptable, as well as pick up a new language. As you venture further into this practice, you'll find yourself more and more annoyed at the apps you use that aren't scriptable, to the point where it starts to affect your choice of apps ;-)

Also, consider a cron job, Windows scheduled task, or similar OS X analog to automatically run certain tasks at certain times of day/week/month/year. You can use this for anything from the "workday morning" scripts mentioned previously, to reminding you of your wife's birthday and anniversary every year. There's some more info here for *NIX systems, or here for Windows boxes.

Happy automation!

Answer 7

I have a hard time wrapping my head around Applescript, but since Apple runs BASH scripts just fine, I just use those instead. I've got a development server on my mac, so I've got a script that I can run to create a new site directory, create a new virtual host in apache, add a new domain to my /etc/hosts file, etc.

It's especially cool to integrate Bash (or probably applescript, although I don't know how) with Growl. That way, you can put a nice message up on the screen, complete with a png icon. This is more useful for things that your scripts do during the day though.

Answer 8

I do most of my programming work on a development server at work, so in the evening I simply detach my screen session and re-attach it in the morning, so it takes just a few seconds until I'm exactly where I left the day before.

I have some macros defined in mutt to clean up my inbox (archive commit mails etc.), I have a script that mounts some directories on the development server on my notebook via sshfs (works without interaction using public keys), and after that all I have to do is start up a browser and get a coffee. :)