I Automated My Job to Save Time — and Found Myself Wondering What to Do With It

It started as a weekend project.

I wasn’t trying to make a statement. I wasn’t trying to get out of work. I was just trying to stop drowning in it. Every day looked the same: spreadsheets, reports, email follow-ups, Slack pings, and data entry. The kind of work that paid well but felt like someone put a warm blanket over your soul and asked you to fall asleep standing up.

So one Saturday morning, fueled by too much coffee and a growing resentment for repetition, I decided to see what I could automate.

I started with a Python script to clean up CSV files. Then I connected it to a Google Sheet using an API. Then I added a bit of logic to pull data from our CRM. One by one, I eliminated the little things. My morning reports. The weekly analytics summaries. The performance dashboards.

By Sunday night, I had cut my daily workload by 70%.

By the following Friday, I’d reduced it by 90%.

I didn’t tell anyone at work. I just kept delivering. On time, every time. My manager praised me for my “consistency” and “attention to detail.” I smiled and said thank you, knowing that my bot — I called it Fred — was working quietly in the background.

At first, it felt like freedom. I had time again. Real time. Hours of it. I could make a real breakfast instead of inhaling cereal over emails. I could read during lunch. I could go for walks and still get my job done.

For a while, I just enjoyed it.

And then… the silence hit.

There’s something unsettling about having nothing urgent to do while everyone around you is drowning. Slack kept pinging. People posted their busy calendars, bragged about back-to-back meetings, and wore their exhaustion like armor. I felt like a ghost at a party. Present, but not really part of it.

I refreshed dashboards Fred had already updated.

I scrolled LinkedIn to feel like I was still part of the hustle.

I watched three productivity videos on YouTube before realizing the irony.

It took me two weeks to admit the truth: I didn’t know what to do with my time.

I’d spent so long optimizing life for efficiency that I forgot why I wanted that efficiency in the first place. What was all this time for? Leisure? Creation? Was I supposed to start a side hustle? Write a novel? Learn the piano?

At one point, I googled “things to do when you’re not working.” That was my rock bottom.

Eventually, I tried something simple. I started journaling — ten minutes a day, no prompt, no judgment. At first, it was messy. Then it turned into thoughts I didn’t know I had.

Turns out, I wasn’t just automating my job — I’d automated parts of myself too. I had become efficient, but also mechanical. A life run like a perfectly scheduled calendar with no room for chaos, no curiosity, no unproductive joy.

So I started doing things that didn’t make sense.

I took an online improv class.

I volunteered to teach kids coding on Saturdays.

I started baking, and I was terrible at it. But something about failing on purpose, about measuring flour and burning muffins, made me feel more human than I had in years.

Fred still runs my job. Every day at 9:00 AM, he sends the reports. At 11:30, he pings the marketing team with insights. At 2:00 PM, he checks for anomalies in the data and logs them neatly in a dashboard I rarely open.

He’s a better employee than I ever was.

But I’m finally starting to feel like a better person.

I no longer think of time as something to save. I think of it as something to spend — carefully, joyfully, sometimes foolishly.

Automation gave me time.

But it was the discomfort that taught me what to do with it.

If you’re reading this and dreaming of automating your way out of a boring job, do it. Free yourself. But don’t forget — saving time is only the beginning. What matters is what you choose to fill it with.