The trouble with a fully automatic life

Robots on auto assembly linePeople are lazy. And laziness, when kept under control, fuels a lot of their drive to do things faster and better. Let’s be honest, we’d all want to work less and smarter, generate more income and have tons of time to enjoy those we love, our passions and our hobbies. Given the opportunity, we’d all prefer to work for 3 months and travel around the world for the rest of the year (or insert other pleasant pastime here).

We need to stay mobile and render parts of what we do automatic, so that we gain time. And when it comes to social media, well, we have taken automatic to another level. Auto replies, retweets, direct messages, scheduled posts, automatic posting of content to social media websites. It’s all working out great for us.

But when we go fully automatic, we also fail to monitor what’s happening. We know things are taken care of, so we can’t we bothered with those aspects anymore, we have other, more pressing matters on our hands. The danger? Automatic processes don’t stop to think. And that’s how a few days ago a quite famous blogger managed to retweet their about page. Now one really tweets their blog’s about page and I caught some quite negative reactions. I immediately thought it was an automatic tweet plugin gone wrong.

So go automatic when it suits you. We all need the helping hand. Or about a dozen of them. But remember no piece of software can really be installed and then forgotten, no matter what their marketers tell you. Try to keep track of what you’re running and prevent minor mishaps that can make you look bad.

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This post has 9 comments

  • Malini

    Yeah thats true. Even i try to use automated tools and later i never went back checked them. Thought provoking post! Thanks for sharing it

  • Alina Popescu

    Malini, most of us tend to forget about such tools. They’re there to make our lives easier, not to be one extra worry on our mind :) Yet they should be.

  • bart

    Well written Alina. In a way automated services can be helpful but I think they only should be used in either non-reactive circumstances (i.e. not for third parties) or under conditions that are fully under one’s control. One runs the risk of making mistakes or going into overload whilst trying to keep everything under control.
    .-= bart´s last blog ..Fractals on Friday =-.

  • Alina Popescu

    It’s funny how trying to render things effective can lead to overload and going completely nuts :) You are right, unless it’s completely harmless or under control, fully automatic rarely works without errors.

  • Ros

    Luckily I am awful at all those automated services and things like that. I’m quite the traditinalist and like to do stuff by my own hand (that’s my excuse for being rubbish at technological things!)
    .-= Ros´s last blog ..Tęsknota za domem i rodziną =-.

  • Alina Popescu

    Ros,I have to say, of all the excuses, this one is the best you could use :P

  • Schmuck

    A completely automatic life would suck… but it would be great to have some robots that can help you cleaning the room ;)

  • Andrew

    Hi Alina,

    Sorry I haven’t commented here in a while.

    I’m lazy, I just like to ‘set and forget,’ and to a certain degree, automated processes are extremely helpful when it comes to time management.

    That said, we can’t automate everything, and even those aspects of life that are automated should be checked occassionally to see if they are in working order.

  • Alina Popescu

    Schmuck, when you get your hands on those robots, pls let me know. I guess they’d also make great presents for…well, almost anyone :D

    Andrew, please don’t apologize, I am so far behind with commenting I am ashamed to even mention it :) You are right, no matter how much we’re mesmerized by the “set and forget” promise, checking everything once in a while is a marvelous idea. Speaking of set and forget, you can’t imagine how many support emails would mention “the add set and forget and look what happened!” :D

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