Three Principles of Effective Automation
Not all automation is helpful. Here's how to tell the difference.
"Automate everything" sounds great until you've automated yourself into a mess. Some automation saves hours. Some creates more problems than it solves.
After building automation systems for creative professionals, we've learned what separates helpful automation from headaches.
Principle 1: Only Automate the Repetitive Stuff
Automation is brilliant at tasks that are:
- Predictable (the same steps every time)
- Repetitive (you do them frequently)
- Rule-based (clear "if this, then that" logic)
Good things to automate:
- Sending a follow-up email 3 days after a proposal
- Creating an invoice when a project is marked complete
- Moving files to the right folder based on project name
- Sending a weekly summary of outstanding tasks
Bad things to automate:
- Writing personalised client emails
- Deciding which projects to prioritise
- Handling unusual client requests
- Anything requiring judgment or creativity
The goal isn't to automate everything. It's to automate the repetitive tasks so you have more time for the creative ones.
Principle 2: Keep Yourself in Control
The best automation handles the boring steps but leaves decisions to you.
Example: An automation that sends a payment reminder automatically is risky — what if the client has a genuine issue? An automation that drafts the reminder and asks "Send this?" keeps you in the loop.
Good automation should feel like a helpful assistant, not a robot making decisions without you.
Ask yourself: "Would I be comfortable if this ran while I was on holiday?" If the answer is "no," you need more human checkpoints.
Principle 3: Plan for When Things Go Wrong
Automation will occasionally fail. A service goes down. Data arrives in an unexpected format. A client does something unusual.
Well-designed automation:
- Tells you when something fails — not silently breaks
- Explains what went wrong — not just "Error"
- Makes it easy to fix — not a nightmare to untangle
If your automation fails silently, you won't know until a client asks why they never got that invoice.
Applying These Principles
Before automating anything, ask:
- Is this task predictable and repetitive?
- Does the automation keep me in control of decisions?
- Will I know if something goes wrong?
If yes to all three, automate it. If not, reconsider.
DesBu has automation built in, designed around these principles. See it in action →
