Hi! Deb here, from the Zapier blog. What I love most about the Zapier Community is seeing all the super-specific things folks are automating. It's fascinating because automation is so powerful, yes, but also because the humans behind the workflows (that's you) even knew these things were possible.

Our customer-champion-cum-blog-writer Tyler recently wrote about this on the blog—and her actually suggested that we all take a step back from automation to flex our manual muscles and figure out what else automation might be able to do for us.

That's right: he wants us to start by automating less.

To get the most out of automation, try using it less

The idea is that you'll get better at automating if you've practiced it manually first (plus, you have something to fall back on when the robot overlords break all our systems). 

Here's an example. I use Google Sheets as my to-do list, and I used to just type all my tasks in manually. By doing that, I learned what information was relevant for me to have in my to-do list, what kinds of columns made the most sense for me, and how the information would be best organized. By tinkering manually with my system, I got it to the point where I could automate it to maximum efficiency. Now I have a bunch of Zaps set up to add things to my to-do list in the exact right spots.

What process did you do manually before automating? How did it help you hone your automated workflows? Let me know in the comments!