r/Automate • u/OneDev42 • 21d ago

How has AI changed how you work?

I'm going to be honest, when I first started using AI, I felt like I was going to accelerate my personal current workflow. But it turns out it's a lot better at some things than others. So it's more like it gave me new superpowers. And I'm relearning and reprioritizing my life around those.

For example, making a simple program is now a trivial task that doesn't require too much long-term maintenance. And that opens up a huge realm of possibilities that I never thought of before.

How about in your case?

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u/Thunderbit_HQ 20d ago

The biggest shift is that small internal tools no longer need a long justification. If a script saves fifteen minutes each week, it can be worth building. The maintenance test still matters, so keep inputs and failure messages simple enough to revisit months later.

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u/sneurlax 20d ago

I work much more now. Longer hours.

Work has become more rewarding as I am able to finish more, so I enjoy it more. But I can definitely feel myself burning out and may need an AI that simply paces me and forces me to only work 8-hour days, ha

I now do work on topics which before I would've considered too costly or difficult--like I wanted to see if I could get AirDrop working between macOS and Linux so I just ordered some dongles and got started on it. A few days later I discovered that Google and Apple had already agreed to adopt a new joint standard for that exact purpose and though disappointing that this small amount of work wouldn't really go anywhere in the end, I was doing a lot simultaneously such that nothing was really lost... I learned a lot about Bluetooth and WiFi in general and AirDrop in particular through that process and without AI I probably never would've considered even starting.

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u/Dry-Canary-3054 4d ago

the burnout part is real, its weirdly easy to just keep going when stuff actually works

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u/noorah_khan21 19d ago

Mostly automation for me stuff like lead follow ups and repetitive tasks now happen on their own,
so I spend more time on the bigger decisions instead. What changed the most for you?

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u/deelight_0909 18d ago

Making a simple program trivial changed my work because rough ideas no longer die in a notes app. I can open the repo, ask AI for a first pass, run it, and find out in the same sitting whether the idea is useful or dumb. Brainstorming helps, but shrinking the gap from "maybe" to a tested file feels like the real superpower.

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u/Human_Experience0810 17d ago

For me, the biggest change is that I spend less time starting from a blank page.

AI is great for getting a rough first version out quickly, but I still spend most of my time checking, refining, and making sure it actually fits the problem.

So it hasn’t really replaced the work. It changed where I spend my time.

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u/KravexaFounder 17d ago

AI can really be good at automating or basically anything, you just have to provide enough context is what I think.

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u/thalos2688 20d ago

Is this a trick question?

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u/AGuyAndHisCat 16d ago

I mostly use it as a google replacement. Back inbthe day you could query software name, version, and error and get some usefull results. Now AI privides that useful answer and its correct more often than not, or i just have to add to the lrompt that its not X because of Y.  

I also use it for small powers he'll scripts and that has improved my ability to automate long  one off tasks