What Else Can I Automate?
During the aughts, I paid my bills as an enterprise systems consultant. The projects varied, but my colleagues and I largely needed to be on site Monday through Thursday. Fridays were typically admin days. That is, we submitted our weekly expenses, sent our PMs status reports, participated in conference calls, and the like.
For consultants, recapping weekly activities has always been a necessary evil. We needed to justify our rates. Consulting engagement managers, client bean counters, project managers, and internal auditors don't like being kept in the dark. The tedious manual process traditionally took my peers anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. I usually shaved about 50 percent off that number by starting from an existing template and updating it throughout the week.
Is There a Better Way?
What if you could automate that entire process? Even ten years ago, the answer to that question would have been a hard no. Today, it's easier than ever and, best of all, requires zero coding knowledge.
Last week, I built a simple Notion custom agent via the following prompt:
As I do with all of my Notion custom agents, I gave it a clever, phonetic name:
And voilà!
Results and Going Down the Rabbit Role
I'm now able to access a simple log of all of the Notion-related work I've performed the past seven days. (Oh, the power of metadata.) I suspect that I'll be able to learn a great deal about how I use Notion—and how I can improve in the future. A neat launchd job on my Mac sends my daily results to a separate Notion database. And, of course, I back up all of my code on GitHub.
I've created the same automation for my bestie Claude.
And why not toss in a simple but effective graph?
Need help building an app or system to track key personal or professional tasks?
Finally, for good measure, I added a simple AI summary of the day's activities for easy viewing:
If you only consider Notion a note-taking app, you're really missing out.
Phil Simon
Simon Says
No, you can't automate everything. At the same time, it's downright silly to stick with manual processes out of habit or laziness. Once one domino falls, you may be surprised with what you eventually create.
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