Project Phoenix: Spread the Automagic
If you read my posts My Brain is Too Full and Habits! Systems! Rituals! Oh My! or if you read the first installments in the Project Phoenix series, this is where we get all Legends of Tomorrow up in this biz. I’m bringing both series together under the continuing title of Project Phoenix. If you’re looking to digifficiency-ize your life, this is a slightly above average approach to that.
This episode we’re talking about automation (as promised in Habits! Systems! Rituals! Oh My!). I’ve always thought automation sounds like an intimidating word. Isn’t that where the robots steal our jobs? Isn’t that what programmers do to calibrate the watt load on their high end computers? First, watt load is not a thing (::Googles watt load::) just kidding it’s totally a thing, just not really in that context.
What is automation then? It’s really just setting up some stuff that happens by itself. You’ve done automation before. When you set the timer for the lights to turn on and off — automation. When you program the coffee pot to start by itself or TiVo to record your favorite show (Is TiVo still a thing?) — automation. When your students check themselves in for lunch — automation. See? It’s all over in your life.
This week, pay attention to the things you do repeatedly. For example, when I get to work, I open my email, calendar, Trello, and GitHub as well as Amphetamine, IntelliJ, Slack, and Spectacle. Every morning like clockwork it’s the same apps and websites. Every morning I check the weather. Every day on the way to work I listen to podcasts, but sometimes I forget to download them before I leave the house and then I have nothing to listen to. That is an opportunity for automation. We’ll talk about that more next week.
This week just pay attention to your patterns. What do you repeat every day? Every week? Every month? Write it down in your handy journal or app and bring it back for next week’s post.
