Ask HN: What do you automate in your life and work?

deleting emails in gmail. It's unnecesarily complex but i can add a marker such as _delete_ in emails or use filters to get them auto-labeled, and then i have to use a google script to delete those after a month. It sounds like something that should be trivial for everyone to do, but it's not.

Wrote a program that tracks Australian movie release dates for movies I'm interested in. Sends a daily email if a release date moves, or there a new movies for me to flag my interest in.

Interfaces with themoviedb.org for plot summary, cast and crew info and such. Interfaces with Google Calendar for writing entries for each movie I'm tracking.

The code is available although a bit rough. https://github.com/evmcl/movieschedule

Have an ultrasonic sensor on top of my monitor that's used as a presence sensor to tell the computer when I’m in front of it or not.

Pauses the music player when I walk away and starts again when I return.

More details here: https://www.michevan.id.au/posts/are-you-there/

This might sound a little-bit stupid, but I automate locking/unlocking internet access on my phone and computer.

That is to say, every night my computers and phone will lock me out[0] at a set time. Then in the morning I have to log 30 minutes of exercise (tracked by my heartrate on fitbit) to unlock internet access.

I also have certain time-wasting sites like Reddit and Netflix locked out until I complete a sufficiently difficult problem on leetcode, projecteuler, or wechall

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I was just finding it hard to keep myself going to bed at a decent hour when I have no constraints like a 9-5 job and to keep an exercise routine going. So this automation has helped me.

[0] My computers are basically totally locked, my phone keeps the phone, messaging, camera, and skype accessible

[Not really automation, but I'm hijacking the opportunity to tell the story.]

I'm a terrible morning person and I noticed that I need much longer to get up and dressed and everything than it reasonably should take. On the order of "taking 1 hour to do stuff that can be done in 15 minutes". I seem to have ADHD (disclaimer: not formally diagnosed, just going off of symptom lists and descriptions from other people), and that in combination with morning drowsiness seems to make me really ineffective at this point.

So I wrote down a list of all the things that I need to do in the morning, together with an upper estimate of how long this is going to take. Think something like this:

  { "tasks": [
    { "label": "Make the bed", "duration": "60s" },
    { "label": "Morning wash", "duration": "3m" },
    { "label": "Get dressed", "duration": "2m" },
    ...
  ]}

I built an application for my desktop PC that just runs down this playbook and always shows the current task, together with a timer for the current task as well as the overall playbook, in comically large fonts to fill the screen:

  PREPARE BREAKFAST

  Current: 04:45/05:00
  Total: 16:45/59:30

There is no "Pause" button, only "Skip" for when a task is shorted than the alloted time. Also, the application can beep to signal "3-2-1-Over" at the end of each task, and each task can have a configurable beeping interval. The whole point of the system is to be breathing down my neck to stop me from procrastinating, and it works perfectly in that regard.

Since starting with this tool a few weeks ago, my morning routine has gotten a bit shorter, but I also get more stuff done at the same time. I have a slot for meditation, so I'm now doing that semi-regularly in the morning. (I still skip it too often. Maybe I should make that task unskippable.) I have a slot for preparing a packed lunch, so I don't have to eat out as much and save some money in the process. With the time saved, I've switched my commute from tram to walking. I'm still tweaking the playbook here and there, but it already feels great to arrive at work in the morning knowing that I've already done several positive things for my well-being, rather than the bare minimum as it used to be.