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Antiwork

Successfully Automated My Job

I work a desk job pushing paperwork around at a highly successful small business(around 35 employees, 5M/year gross). When I started the next youngest guy in the company was 20 years older than I and as a result almost everything was done using actual pen and paper instead of digital documents. Over the last 5 years I have converted everything to digital(PDF and Excel) and now use a scripting language called AutoHotKey to automate all of that digital work. When I say automate I mean the script scans and downloads my email for the day, reads the digital PDF invoices and automatically enters them into our system 100% without my intervention. If it finds a problem with the invoice(wrong PO number for example) it attaches an error msg to the end of the file and automatically emails it to the project manager for review. It also schedules my emails to…


I work a desk job pushing paperwork around at a highly successful small business(around 35 employees, 5M/year gross). When I started the next youngest guy in the company was 20 years older than I and as a result almost everything was done using actual pen and paper instead of digital documents. Over the last 5 years I have converted everything to digital(PDF and Excel) and now use a scripting language called AutoHotKey to automate all of that digital work. When I say automate I mean the script scans and downloads my email for the day, reads the digital PDF invoices and automatically enters them into our system 100% without my intervention. If it finds a problem with the invoice(wrong PO number for example) it attaches an error msg to the end of the file and automatically emails it to the project manager for review. It also schedules my emails to go out sporadically throughout the day so it looks like I am actively working all day long.

I now spend 50% of my day watching youtube, playing games(Lost Ark, WoW, LoL, etc.) and 3D modeling for my side business(3D printing) while my script does nearly all my work for me. What used to take 20 solid hours per week now takes an hour a day maybe. I think I answered 5 single sentence emails yesterday in the course of an entire 8 hour day.

I would be happy to answer questions about my situation and point people in the right direction to follow my lead if they wish. Just wanted to share my success at beating the system with you guys. Good luck out there everyone.

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