Fire Automations is my weekly newsletter where I cut through the hype and teach you when automation is worth it, what to automate, and how to implement it in real businesses
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Most people try to automate too early. They see a slick demo, wire up a few tools, and end up with a brittle mess that breaks the minute someone changes a form field or renames a folder. I have done this more times than I want to admit. The good news is that “ready to automate” is not a vibe. It’s a set of signals you can actually spot in your day to day work. When those signals show up, automation stops feeling like a science project and starts feeling like free time.
Below are seven signs you are past the “should we?” phase and in the “this will actually stick” zone.
1. The task happens weekly (or daily) and you are tired of it
If you do something at least once a week and it still feels annoyingly manual, you are a prime candidate. The easiest wins are usually small but frequent: copying form responses into a tracker, sending the same follow up email, saving attachments to a client folder, posting a status update. This is where tools like Zapier or Make shine because the setup is fast and the payoff compounds.
My rule: if it saves you 10 minutes a day, that is about an hour a week for something that often takes under an hour to automate.
2. The process is boring because it is consistent
Automation hates novelty. If your steps change every time, you will spend more time maintaining than saving. You are ready when you can describe the workflow in one sentence without caveats, like “When a lead fills out this form, create a record, assign an owner, and send a confirmation.” That kind of consistency is why simple triggers (forms, emails, calendar events, new rows in a sheet) are automation gold. If you catch yourself saying “well, unless…” more than once, tighten the process first, then automate.
3. You can name the exact start and finish
A surprising number of “automation ideas” are really fuzzy intentions. Ready looks like this: you know the trigger and you know the definition of done. Trigger: “New Typeform submission.” Done: “Airtable record created, Slack message posted to #leads, and a Calendly link sent.” When the boundaries are that clear, you can build the workflow in Zapier, Make, or Microsoft Power Automate without inventing logic along the way. If you cannot define the finish line, you will keep tinkering forever.
4. You have one place where the truth lives
Automations get messy when you have duplicates of the same information across five tools and no one knows which one is real. You are ready when you can say “this is the system of record,” even if it is just Google Sheets, Airtable, HubSpot, or Notion. Once that is true, automation becomes a clean pipeline: collect data, normalize it, store it, notify the right person. This is also where I see the biggest quality jump from “random zaps” to workflows that actually scale.
5. A mistake would be annoying, not catastrophic
Start where failure is survivable. If a workflow breaks and you miss one internal Slack notification, that is annoying. If it breaks and invoices do not go out, that is a different level of risk. You are ready when you can choose a process where errors are visible and recoverable, and you are willing to add a simple safety net like a daily digest email or an “if missing field, stop” rule. The people who get the most value from automation are not the ones who never have failures. They are the ones who design for them.
6. You can test with real data in 15 minutes
If you cannot test quickly, you will procrastinate or ship something half working. You are ready when you can run a small batch end to end: submit a dummy form, send yourself a test email, create a sample calendar event, and watch the automation run. This is why I like building the first version in the simplest tool that fits, then upgrading later if needed. I once spent 45 minutes setting up a lead capture flow (form to Airtable to Slack), and the first test immediately exposed one field mismatch. Fixing it took two minutes and saved me about two hours a week after that.
7. You are willing to “own” it for 10 minutes a month
Automation is not set it and forget it. Tools change, permissions expire, someone edits a form, and suddenly your workflow quietly stops. You are ready when you accept a small maintenance habit: check error logs, scan a weekly report, or keep one “Automation Health” reminder on your calendar. If that sounds exhausting, keep the automation smaller, not nonexistent.
The best workflows are boring to maintain because they are simple, well scoped, and built around stable inputs.
Final thoughts
If you saw yourself in three or more of these signs, you do not need more research. You need one small automation you can finish this week. Pick a workflow with a clear trigger, a clear finish, and low risk if it fails. Build the first version in something straightforward like Zapier, Make, or Power Automate, and keep it intentionally simple. Once you get one win, you will start spotting the next five without even trying.