And the follow up: how are yall documenting your automations so that next year when it breaks you can recreate it.
Automation means that the code is the documentation…usually
So, I installed zwave lights everywhere. It was a giant pain!
I replaced them all with light switches that have motion sensors. Some turn off automatically after being turned on with no motion. Some turn on somatically with motion (and off again later.)
A small handful were turned back into normal light switches because I didn’t want the automation for those rooms.
To me, THAT is automation. Wherever I was thinking about using an app from my bed was not automation. I just moved the light switch to my phone.
Removed by mod
Mine are mostly IT stuff
ansibleplaybook for updating my VMs- nightly scheduled pipelines for CI/CD to deploy
piholeandnginx-proxy-manager - UniFi devices auto-updating to newest software and firmware
- night light / blue light filter automatically switches on and off on my PC
- all VMs automatically back themselves up to a backupserver
- backupserver syncs itself with offsite-backupserver

I like that this very specific thing is the top rated comment
Makes me believe, that there is still some culture and sophistication in this world.
I have a cheap shitty desk lamp. It would cost zero cents of effort to lean over and switch it on when I sit down at my desk, so I bought a dozen smart plugs, and fought through setting up HomeAssistant.
Now I have a digital Rube Goldberg machine that lights my desk for me. HomeAssistant reads the wattage of my PC through one smart plug, I wake the PC from sleep, HA switches on another smart plug for the desk light.
I think this is the most effort I’ve ever put into being lazy.
if I hold the button that turns on my desk light it starts my computer with wake on lan
I sometimes use cruise control in the car.
I have an app made notifications shut up for a few minutes when that friend of yours message
You
One
Word
At
A
Time
I feel you. I wonder
if
there’s
a way
to do that
for slack
The app probably can work with it. Here’s the rule for it.

It’s called Buzzkill. It’s on the Play Store. It’s a pay once app, but no trial. I don’t think it’s FOSS, sadly. I forgot how much it is since I’ve paid for it years ago I think.
I think I found a FOSS alternative on f-droid or Izzy, but I forgot what it is, and never tried it.
Edit: found it. Here it is: notifilter.
Not sure what you mean with automations, but there is a nice balance to be had between avoiding stuff that needs maintenance and getting stuff that is doing the maintenance of other stuff for you. So don’t buy that aquarium if you do not want to do the maintenance and upkeep on that.
Other things: Dishwasher. Robot vacuum. They are awesome as fuck
I must not automate, offloading my mental tasks is the enemy (I am dying of executive dysfunction)
Automation has greatly helped my executive dysfunction by making daily tasks less arduous and overwhelming.
I believe you. I’ve got poor impulse control and an already pretty feeble mind i.m.o. so I’m scared that if I tried I would go to far and make my situation worse
Figuring out and learning new automations keep my mind interested and I’m constantly working on new novel tasks. I don’t know how it’ll work for you but this helped me a lot.
Thanks, at the very least it will be a cool read with stuff to learn
For me automating the things that cluttered my brain helped. Lights that turn off at a certain time because I can’t remember to turn anything off. A nighttime routine that multiple times saved my ass from staying up all night on a hyper focus.
Basically the side lights in my bedroom would go on at a certain time. Half an hour later every light except the side lights would turn off, then 10 minutes before bed the lights went off and the night light turned on. At bed time the night light turned off and the fan turned on. Really helped give me time cues to wrap up. Had a similar thing for the AM so I could get out of my house on time.
I also had notifications to my phone about laundry because I could never remember I was doing it. I also had automatic litter boxes. Not even as much for the self clean, it came in handy so much more for knowing the bathroom habits of my cats and the reminder to empty the litter. It’s how I figured out which cat was peeing in my shower. Turns out, she had arthritis and needed a very short litter box.
I had a garage door sensor as well because my family worked on projects in my garage so it was really nice to know when someone was at my house. And another light routine with that because I clearly inherited my ADHD 🤣 I also had a roommate with kids and kids can’t turn off lights either so light automatons everywhere! And a smart lock cause Jesus fuck finding keys lol.
In your case then, I’m not gonna knock it.
We like to sleep with rain noises at night, so I set up a home assistant automation to turn on the sounds at 9pm, and turn them off at 9am. I also had to set a trigger for when HA starts since performing a backup of the VM would result in it stopping at 3am lol.
Around 10 years ago I “took the vow” to never lie again. That’s a kind of automation in a sense that I’ve decided in advance how I’m going to behave. Sure has made things more simple, though not always the most comfortable action.
I am always as truthful as I can, it is so much easier.
No offense, but what were you doing before that?
Saying things like “Sorry, I don’t have time to talk right now” or “I can’t come because I have somewhere else I need to be then” and so on. Sparing myself from the discomfort of telling the truth or alternatively thinking I’m sparing people from feeling bad by not telling them what I actually think as if I was somehow a better judge of their capability to handle truth and discomfort.
And I’m not referring to radical honesty - I’m talking about simply not saying things that are untrue.
I used to have my smart bulbs turn on and off automatically based on the time of day, but since I moved into this apartment, it doesn’t really help since the only windows face another building and the orientation basically makes it dark 24/7 without using lights.
Had a customer with 12 sites and didn’t want to pay for FortiManager. So when they wanted a site white listed from SSL inspection we had to log into 12 devices to add the domain to SSL exemption, sdwan exemption, and a custom web filter ID.
I made a quick Ansible playbook that would take a list of domains and add them to the appropriate groups on all 12 sites in under 1 min.At this current moment, not much. Just the night time automatons on my phone to dim the screen and go silent. I just moved though so I haven’t gone full smart home yet. But the robot vacuum doing the day to day cleaning is nice.








