Small automations beat big systems

The instinct, when a process is painful, is to reach for a big system to fix it. My experience so far points the other way.

The biggest gains I’ve seen have come from small, boring automations — a macro that removes a repetitive step, a check that catches an error before it spreads, a template that stops a decision being remade every time. Each one is minor on its own. Together they change how the work feels.

Small automations are also cheaper to get wrong. If one is flawed, you notice quickly and the blast radius is small. A large system that’s subtly wrong can hide its problems for a long time.

This idea is growing. I want to keep collecting examples and see whether the pattern holds up, or whether there’s a point where the small pieces really do need to become a system.