When people start with automation, they often pick the most complex or “interesting” parts of their work. That can feel appealing, but it rarely gives the best return. A more practical approach is to first automate the parts of a process that repeat often and need to be done many times.

You should look for tasks that come up again and again. These are the actions you perform every day or several times a week. They are usually predictable, a bit boring, and you can almost do them on autopilot. Even if each instance is quick, the total time spent adds up.

On the other hand, you can wait before you automate tasks that are quite static and done rarely. These are things you set up once and then hardly touch. They might be important, but because they do not repeat much, you will not gain that much by automating them first.

A simple example is a testing workflow in software development. One part is writing the code for a test. Another part is evaluating the result of a test run. Writing the test code typically happens once per test and is updated infrequently. Evaluating the test result happens every time the test runs.

From a practical point of view, it makes more sense to first automate the evaluation of test results, because it is repeated many times. Automating the creation of test code can still be useful, but since it is done once and updated rarely, it is usually a weaker candidate for your very first automation efforts.

So, when you decide what to automate, start by asking: what do I do most often, and what follows clear, repeatable steps? Automate those parts first, and postpone the work that is static, infrequent, and more one-off in nature