"Uh… we have sort of a problem here. Yeah. You apparently didn’t put one of the new coversheets on your TPS reports." I have to format my daily work log two different ways, one in a PDF and one in a word document.
Do you work for satan?
Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
51–60 of 68 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#52This is a great way to find ideas for a startup btw... the classic one is finding out what tedious stuff people do in Excel all day then simplify and automate. I will say for me I spend probably too long opening a series of programs and getting set up before I can work. I believe there is software for this, but my dream is to have it simple and customizable by project. I would love to be able to open everything to th…
I would absolutely love a keyboard shortcut per project so I could hot swap between services without having to worry about killing containers, building new ones, opening and then resizing/positioning editors, opening (resizing/positioning) spec docs. I agree this sounds trivial, but the overhead of getting my multi-monitor setup just right when switching to a new service in the codebase is enough to kill flow.
window manager plus tmux could probably take you far. i agree that “trivial” frictions like this really add up to stress and work avoidance
Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#53"Uh… we have sort of a problem here. Yeah. You apparently didn’t put one of the new coversheets on your TPS reports." I have to format my daily work log two different ways, one in a PDF and one in a word document.
libreoffice has a script to convert word to pdf on the commandline.
https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/167263/how-to-conver...
Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#54I work at a fortune 100 insurance company in a dedicated IT subdivision of the company. Fairly quickly, one might find that all requests are repetitive. It can be quite productive, professionally, to just assume that whatever you're asked to do, will be asked for again, and to learn how to pre-empt those requests by writing the first solution directly as automation code. It doesn't have to be rocket science. Just kee…
The Promus of Formularies, Elegancie, and Python Scripts
Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't consider any of those tasks repetitive. Well your first batch, you added more after I commented.
Oh I'm still adding. I consider them all repetitive, but it's okay to debate some or most. The point is I'm guessing about a stranger's life and I'm bound to hit on some repetitive tasks they do. The answer 'none' is just condescending to the point of silly and it's obviously not true. I'm hoping to illuminate how there are repetitive patterns in everyone's life. Even 'pure math researchers'.
what's so bad about repetition anyway? It's like grabbing a hammer and scouring a building looking for loose nails to justify its use. why not focus on difficult problems instead?
Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me your list sounded like you were making fun of the previous poster. Very "small picture"
I'm not making fun of anyone! To me it sounds like the poster is making fun of all of us fools who have repetitive tasks in our lives. > 'What repetitive tasks do you do?' > 'None. I'm in pure math ' ...just seems snarky and condescending. I'm listing real problems that most people have, that are indeed repetitive, mostly work-related, and could have solutions (at least partial solutions).
I think the issue is that most people don't see many of the items on your list as either solvable, or something that gets in the way of work or other activities. But one item on the list did stick out for me -- pens/paper. Back when I worked for a catalog / contract office supply place (there used to be a bunch of small ones back before the mid 90's), they had a company that they worked with which would go out to customers and manage their office supply closet inventory for them. And automatically place orders for anything that was running low. Was a real time saver for many of our customers back then.
Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#57Hardware inventory taking, I need to figure out a faster and less tedious way of doing it. Was thinking maybe building a kind of barcode system to speed up the data-entry process when going out on a floor to eliminate the possibility of mistyped data.
QR codes and a handful of cheap smartphones are a fairly easy and low cost method of doing this. You can even make an android app to streamline the process even farther.
Of course, I'm still trying to find a good solution for printing those QR codes. Printers suck and printing labels is it's own special kind of hell.
Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#58My most common repetitive task at work? Writing scripts to avoid repetitive tasks.
You should automate that!
Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#59Re: Ask HN: What are some repetitive tasks you do at work?
#60I use git a lot and I find it quite repetitive, but I know if I spent a bit of time I could compose commands into scripts and all that.
Apart from that, no not really. I guess that’s the perk of working at a small company. One day I’m DevOps, the next I’m Front End, the next DBA etc.