Ask HN: What have you automated that saved you a ton of time? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What have you automated that saved you a ton of time?

20 pointsdeadcoder090417 comments

Applying labels on my emails by keywords, sender, etc. I know I can search them, but having them sorted in labels makes everything easier to find without actually searching.

I also work hard on keeping my email inbox empty unless something has to be done on a specific email.

I also try to avoid reading news at work (source of distraction), but I want to keep myself as up-to-date as possible so I made some IFTTT applets which monitors some RSS feeds combined with some keywords I'm interested in. If there is a match, I get the URL sent to my Pocket account and the article will be sent to my eReader (supported natively by Kobo), and synced to be read offline while I commute to work or go back home.

I have a few instances of bit bar monitoring services / logs / up time.

https://github.com/matryer/bitbar

This has completely stopped me from stressing/anxiety over potential issues as I can just look to the top of my screen.

I have a Autohot key script that does the following:

Auto correct on some works i mis-type regularly

shortcut for server names, all our sever are formatted PrefixNumber, shortkey #number types the full name

Allows ctrl-v into cmd window

Fills in my default fields in our ticketing system

I date any note I take in onenote, #d shortcuts to todays date

Signatures for emails, #tr for Thanks and Regards

+- for ±

#desk/#mobile for my phone numbers

ctrl-alt-m to open a new email from anywhere

I don't think they save a huge amount of time in general but the prevent breaking your flow to check the date, remember my phone number etc which I think is more important.

Small but they add up.

Turning on the lights with my alarm clock has probably saved me about 10-20 minutes a day of laying in bed.

I've managed to automate this even further by leaving my curtains open.

I would, but my wife would hate me for it. I just have to rely on good old discipline to get out of bed in the morning.

You would think it would be much more unpleasant but because its a gradient from dark to light you wake up more "naturally" feeling refreshed etc. I did it for years cant say I recommend it unless you like waking up at dawn.

How did you compensate for the daylight drift over time?

I added a gmail script to auto delete emails with a certain tag. It should be easier to do and it’s convenient because i can tag all reminders and automated emails that i would otherwise forget to delete

Human context switching.

I'm being cheeky; I mean closing down and bringing up all relevant applications, their state (open windows, tabs, files...) and so on for working on a given task or project.

Sort of like a workspace manager for the OS. Releasing an open beta this fall.

There's a short, low-res demo that kinda illustrates the basic concept on https://cleave.app

is anyone doing this on windows? this looks really cool and useful.

Not to my knowledge, no.

Good idea! I recently identified this as one of the huge obstacles in my workflow and now I am looking for options to save and manage my sessions in Linux / i3.

So far i3-resurrect looks promising, anybody else have suggestions?

A Chrome extension that quickly checks websites for common problems (e.g. broken links, invalid HTML): https://www.checkbot.io

I wrote it to help with websites I was working on.

I wrote a powershell script to automate the remote restart of windows services, saves me about 1 hour per day every day

Automatic backups timed for the middle of the night.

Such a small thing to do, and much peace of mind.

Tests. Probably a popular one for many.

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