How to Find and Automate the Repetitive Tasks Killing Your Productivity

Every business has them. Tasks that get done the same way, by the same person, multiple times a week. They’re not hard. They’re not strategic. They’re just… there. And they’re quietly consuming a shocking percentage of your team’s productive hours.

The problem isn’t that business owners don’t know these tasks exist. It’s that they’ve become so routine, so embedded in “how things work,” that nobody stops to ask whether they need to be done manually at all.

Here’s a simple rule: if a task is done the same way more than three times a week, it’s an automation candidate. Not every candidate will be worth automating — but every one is worth examining.

The “Follow the Paper” Audit

The single best way to find automation opportunities is to literally follow a piece of work through your business from start to finish. Pick a common job or transaction and trace every step.

Let’s say you’re a service business. A customer calls to book a job. What happens next?

1. Someone writes down the details (phone, name, address, job description)
2. That information gets entered into your booking system
3. A confirmation email goes to the customer
4. The job gets assigned to a technician
5. The tech gets a text or email with job details
6. The tech travels to site, does the work, writes up notes
7. Job notes come back to the office
8. Someone creates an invoice from the job notes
9. The invoice gets emailed to the customer
10. Someone checks if payment has been received
11. If not, someone chases it up

That’s 11 steps. How many of them require a human to think, make a judgment, or have a conversation? Maybe 3 or 4. The rest are just moving information from one place to another — exactly the kind of work that machines do better, faster, and without errors.

How to Run the Audit

Block out 2 hours. Grab a whiteboard or a big sheet of paper. Pick your 3-5 most common business processes — the things your team does every single day. Then for each one:

Step 1: Map every step. Not the idealised version. The real version, including the workarounds, the “oh and then I also have to…” steps, and the things that only happen because another system doesn’t do what it should. Talk to the people who actually do the work. They know where the friction is.

Step 2: Mark each step as Human or Machine. A “Human” step requires judgment, creativity, relationship, or physical presence. Everything else is a “Machine” step — data transfer, notification, calculation, document generation, scheduling, reminders.

Step 3: Estimate time and frequency. For each Machine step, write down how long it takes and how often it happens. Multiply those out to weekly and monthly totals.

You’ll end up with a clear picture of where your team’s time is going and how much of it is being spent on work that doesn’t need a human.

Prioritise by Impact, Not Complexity

Once you’ve got your list of automation candidates, resist the urge to start with the most impressive-sounding one. Instead, score each candidate on two axes:

Time saved per week. A task that takes 5 minutes but happens 20 times a week (100 minutes total) is a better candidate than one that takes 30 minutes once a week.

Error impact. Some tasks are high-consequence when done wrong. Invoicing errors cost money. Scheduling errors lose customers. Compliance errors risk penalties. Automating high-consequence tasks delivers value beyond just time savings.

Plot your candidates on a simple 2x2 grid: high time savings vs. low time savings on one axis, high error impact vs. low error impact on the other. Start in the top-right corner — high time savings AND high error impact. These are your quick wins with the biggest payoff.

Real Examples From Real Businesses

These aren’t hypothetical. These are tasks I’ve seen automated in actual businesses doing $2M-$20M in revenue.

Trades/Service companies:

• Job completion triggers invoice generation (saves 15-20 min per job)
• Customer inquiry form creates a CRM record, sends an acknowledgment email, and notifies the sales team (saves 10 min per inquiry, eliminates forgotten leads)
• Daily job schedule auto-generates and sends to field staff at 6am (saves 30 min of morning admin)

Professional services:

• New client onboarding creates accounts in project management, accounting, and communication tools simultaneously (saves 25 min per client)
• Timesheet data automatically populates client invoices at month-end (saves 2-4 hours per month)
• Meeting notes auto-generate action items and assign them in the project management tool (saves 15 min per meeting)

Wholesale/Distribution:

• Low stock alerts trigger purchase orders to suppliers based on reorder points (saves hours per week, prevents stockouts)
• Customer orders received via email get parsed and entered into the order management system (saves 5 min per order)
• Delivery confirmation auto-triggers invoicing and updates the customer portal (saves 10 min per delivery)

Start Small, Prove It, Then Expand

The businesses that succeed with automation don’t try to transform everything overnight. They pick one process, automate it properly, measure the result, and use that win to build momentum for the next one.

Here’s a practical starting sequence:

Week 1: Audit. Run the “follow the paper” exercise on your top 3 processes. Map every step. Identify the Machine steps.

Week 2: Quick wins. Look for automations you can set up using tools you already have. Email auto-responders, recurring invoices, form-to-database connections, calendar reminders. These are free or nearly free and deliver immediate results.

Month 1: Mid-range wins. Set up integrations between your core systems using tools like Zapier or Make. Connect your CRM to your accounting software. Connect your booking system to your calendar. Connect your job management to your invoicing.

Quarter 1: Strategic wins. By now you’ll have a clear picture of which processes need something purpose-built — custom logic, complex integrations, or workflows that no off-the-shelf tool handles well. This is where the bigger ROI lives, because these are the automations your competitors can’t replicate with a Zapier tutorial.

Every hour your team spends on tasks a machine could handle is an hour they’re not spending on work that actually requires a human brain. The repetitive stuff doesn’t just waste time — it drains motivation, invites errors, and caps your growth. Finding and eliminating it is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for your business.