How to Automate Boring Tasks with Python

Look, I’m going to be honest with you. I used to spend entire afternoons renaming files. Hundreds of them. One by one. Click, type, enter. Click, type, enter. My back hurt, my eyes were tired, and I felt like I was slowly losing my mind.

Then someone showed me Python, and everything changed.

I know what you’re thinking — “I’m not a programmer” or “coding sounds complicated.” I thought the same thing. But here’s the truth: you don’t need to become a software engineer to make your computer do the boring stuff for you. You just need to learn a few simple tricks.

Why This Actually Matters

We all have those tasks. You know the ones — the mind-numbing, repetitive stuff that makes you question your life choices. Maybe it’s organizing your download folder that’s become a digital junkyard. Or sending the same email to different people every week. Or trying to extract text from a bunch of PDFs because copy-paste decided to have a breakdown.

Python can handle all of this. And I’m not talking about some magical, complicated setup. I’m talking about simple scripts that you can write in 10 minutes and use forever.

Getting Your Computer Ready

Alright, let’s get Python running on your machine. Don’t worry — this is the hardest part, and it’s still pretty easy.

First, go to python.org and download Python. When you install it on Windows, there’s a little checkbox that says “Add Python to PATH” — check that box. Trust me on this one.

Next, you’ll want a place to write code. You can use whatever comes with Python, but I’d recommend downloading VS Code. It’s free, it’s friendly, and it won’t make you feel like you’re defusing a bomb every time you write a line of code.

That’s it. Seriously. You’re ready to start automating your life.

The Scripts That Changed My Life

Making File Names Actually Make Sense

Remember those hundreds of files I mentioned? Here’s how I fixed that nightmare:

import os

folder = "C:/Users/YourName/Desktop/photos"

for count, filename in enumerate(os.listdir(folder)):

new_name = f"photo_{count+1}.jpg"

src = os.path.join(folder, filename)

dst = os.path.join(folder, new_name)

os.rename(src, dst)

print("All files renamed successfully!")

This little script goes through every file in a folder and gives them sensible names like photo_1, photo_2, photo_3. No more IMG_20231015_094832_HDR nonsense.

I ran this on a folder with 300 vacation photos. It took about 2 seconds. I nearly cried with relief.

Your Downloads Folder Doesn’t Have to Be Chaos

My Downloads folder used to look like a tornado hit a file cabinet. Now Python keeps it organized automatically:

import os

import shutil

folder = "C:/Users/YourName/Downloads"

for file in os.listdir(folder):

if file.endswith(".pdf"):

shutil.move(os.path.join(folder, file), os.path.join(folder, "PDFs"))

elif file.endswith(".jpg") or file.endswith(".png"):

shutil.move(os.path.join(folder, file), os.path.join(folder, "Images"))

elif file.endswith(".docx"):

shutil.move(os.path.join(folder, file), os.path.join(folder, "Documents"))

Every PDF goes to a PDFs folder, every image goes to Images, documents go to Documents. It’s like having a really efficient assistant who never gets tired or asks for a raise.

Stop Writing the Same Email Over and Over

I used to send weekly status updates to my team. Same format, different data, every single week. Now Python does it:

import smtplib

from email.mime.text import MIMEText

sender = "[email protected]"

receiver = "[email protected]"

password = "yourpassword"

message = MIMEText("Hey team, here's this week's automated update!")

message["Subject"] = "Weekly Update - Sent by Robot Me"

message["From"] = sender

message["To"] = receiver

server = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)

server.starttls()

server.login(sender, password)

server.sendmail(sender, receiver, message.as_string())

server.quit()

print("Email sent successfully!")

Pro tip: If you use Gmail, you’ll need an “app password” instead of your regular password. Google will walk you through it.

Getting Text Out of PDFs Without Wanting to Scream

PDFs are the worst when you need to copy text out of them. Formatting goes crazy, line breaks appear randomly, and you end up with a mess. Python handles this gracefully:

import PyPDF2

with open("document.pdf", "rb") as file:

reader = PyPDF2.PdfReader(file)

for page in reader.pages:

print(page.extract_text())

I used this to extract information from dozens of invoices. What would have taken hours of copy-pasting took about 30 seconds.

Grabbing Information from Websites

Sometimes you need to check the same website regularly for updates. Maybe it’s news headlines, maybe it’s checking if something’s back in stock. Python can do the checking for you:

import requests

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

url = "https://news.ycombinator.com/"

response = requests.get(url)

soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, "html.parser")

for title in soup.find_all("a", class_="storylink"):

print(title.text)

This grabs all the headlines from Hacker News. You could modify it to check any website and alert you when something changes.

The Real Impact

Here’s what happened after I started automating these tasks: I got my evenings back. I stopped dreading certain parts of my job. I felt like I was finally using technology instead of being used by it.

The time savings add up fast. That file renaming script saves me about an hour every month. The email automation saves me 20 minutes a week. Over a year, that’s days of my life back.

But the real benefit isn’t just time — it’s mental energy. When you know you don’t have to do the boring stuff manually, you can focus on the work that actually matters. The creative stuff. The problem-solving stuff. The human stuff.

What’s Next?

Once you get comfortable with these basics, there’s so much more you can do. You can automate web browsing with Selenium — imagine logging into websites, filling out forms, downloading files, all while you’re asleep. You can analyze spreadsheets with Pandas — cleaning up messy data in seconds instead of hours.

You can even schedule your scripts to run automatically. Set them up once, and they’ll work for you every day at 2 AM while you’re dreaming about not having to do boring tasks.

Just Start Somewhere

Look, I’m not saying you need to automate everything tomorrow. Start small. Pick one annoying task you do regularly and see if Python can handle it. Even if it only saves you 10 minutes a week, that’s 8 hours a year. That’s a full workday you get back.

The beautiful thing about automation is that once you set it up, it works forever. That script I wrote two years ago to organize my downloads? Still running. Still saving me time every single day.

So next time you find yourself doing something repetitive and mind-numbing, stop for a second and ask: “Could I teach my computer to do this instead?”

Most of the time, the answer is yes. And your future self will thank you for it.

Ready to reclaim your time? Start with one small script and watch how quickly it becomes indispensable. Your computer is just sitting there anyway — might as well put it to work.