10 Things Your Computer Can Do For You Automatically

Did you know you can reclaim hours of your time by just short-cutting or automating even the simplest actions you repeat every day, week, month or year? A while back, I invested in a small software that helps me type, launches programs and create simple macros. I didn’t use it to its full potential, most of the time I used it to help me auto-type HTML code, PHP code snippets, WordPress code, repetitive emails, email addresses, website URLs, my bio etc.

One day, I was setting up new texts and realized the software had a little calculator. It told me I had executed over 8,300 commands with it and that added up to about 20 hours saved. Wow.

Alright, it is not an exact figure but it still amazes me how much time those little tasks take up. You may not think launching a program takes more than 10 seconds. But if you are getting forgetful like me and have a gazillion programs installed, sometimes I forget the name of the program by the time I open the launcher! Sometimes, I just can’t find the program. So something that should take 10 seconds can end up taking 5 minutes.

I also love the fact I don’t have to type out URLs in full. Including email addresses. RoboForm is installed and it completes web forms for me but that’s not always applicable sometimes you may have a special page you send people to regularly via email, social networks, articles or just anywhere. The beauty about this all is, the more of these small things you can automate, the more time you’ll save.

Ready to start shaving little chunks of time? Here’s a list of things you can automate right away.

• Backup-of course you knew that.
• Back up your website. Yes, you can certainly set up your computer to retrieve your backups and download while you sleep.
• Rename a bunch of files. Sometimes you have tons of files that need changing of file names. You can set up your system to tell it what file name pattern to use and it’ll do it all for you even at hyper speed, much faster than you can do it.
• Post to your blog. Found some reprint articles you want to be up on your site? Set your computer to copy and paste for you.
• Type your emails. Great for customer support. Program common responses and have your computer automatically typing for you.
• Keyword harvesting. Keyword research is essential for online marketing but it is a thankless, boring job. Program a macro to let it copy and grab the keywords for you.
• Web design. You can program macros to remember code snippets for you like Adsense code for example.
• Set the computer to Tweet or update your social networks at intervals for you.
• Submit articles for you.
• Resize images in bulk.

As you may realize, your computer may or may not be equipped to create such macros for you. Some macro software require more work and a learning curve. I began with something simple called DirectAccess. It may not be able to do some of the more complicated stuff listed here like posting to the blog but it is easy to grasp and the one thing that helped me get started shaving off minutes and later hours over time.