— A survival guide for ops people who are done being copy-paste monkeys
By Zabel Iqbal – fixer of broken ops, caffeine enthusiast, and part-time automation therapist
🎯 Let’s Be Honest — You’re Tired
You wake up, open your laptop, and before your coffee even hits optimal temperature, you’re already dragging the same report into the same folder and pinging the same person with a “Done.”
Every. Single. Day.
I’m not saying you’re not doing important work. I’m saying you’re doing repetitive, soul-leeching tasks that don’t deserve your time. And no — “that’s how we’ve always done it” is not a valid excuse anymore.
It’s time we had a talk about automation.
🧠 What Counts as a Boring Workflow?
If you have to ask, you already know.
It’s that thing you do more than twice a week that makes you question your career choices. The task you could probably do half-asleep, blindfolded, with one hand on your nasi lemak. It’s predictable. It’s boring. And it’s killing your edge.
Maybe it’s updating a spreadsheet every Monday. Maybe it’s copy-pasting data from one tool to another because “there’s no proper integration yet.” Whatever it is — it needs to go. Or at least be delegated to something that doesn’t complain: code.
⚙️ Real-World Tools That Don’t Suck
You don’t need to become a dev. You just need to stop being the human glue holding your stack together.
For the non-coders: Zapier, Make.com, Google Apps Script — they’ll carry you far.
For the slightly nerdier: Python with schedule, or good old Bash + cron jobs. Clean, quiet, and they never ask for raises.
Want something cooler and open-source? Try n8n. It’s Zapier without the price tag or the hand-holding.
Use what makes sense. Just don’t keep doing everything by hand like it’s 2010.
💡 Start Small. Really Small.
The mistake people make is thinking automation has to be big and fancy. Nah.
Try automating just one thing:
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Auto-send an email when a Google Form is submitted.
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Save all file uploads into a sorted folder.
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Turn a Slack message into a task without clicking 12 things.
If it saves you even 3 minutes a day — that’s 15 minutes a week. That’s one less headache. One more slot to breathe.
⚠️ Things That’ll Bite You (Ask Me How I Know)
Not everything can be automated — or should be. If it changes too often, requires judgment, or depends on Karen manually approving something via WhatsApp at 11pm — just don’t.
Also, please: log your automations. Test them. And maybe don’t connect critical financial workflows to someone’s free Notion account.
Trust me. Learn from my pain.
🧪 My “Should I Automate This?” Rule
Here’s my method. Super scientific:
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Did it make you sigh when you opened your to-do list?
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Can a script do it without needing moral support?
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Will you do it again next week?
If yes to all three, it’s fair game.
🎤 Final Thought From a Guy Who Hates Repetition
You weren’t born to be a macro with legs. You’re not a human API. You’ve got better things to do than babysit spreadsheets and chase people for “status updates.”
Automation is how you get your time back. Your focus. Your edge.
So if the idea of typing less, clicking less, and thinking more appeals to you — start small. Build once. Let the machines handle the mundane. You’ve got bigger problems to solve.
Now go make something run while you sip your coffee like a boss.
