Against automation
June 2024
In my capacity as a guy who writes code, I have always pushed back against automation.
Not because itās intrinsically bad, not because itās never useful, but because usually when someone wants to automate something, what they really want is for the thing to be happening at a scale that requires automation.
Itās a fantasy. And Iāve got nothing against fantasies! But theyāre not necessarily worth sinking dozens of hours of effort into.
My usual line is āletās run through the process manually a couple times, document it, then find the parts worth automating.ā And the usual outcome is that we donāt end up running through the process at all.
However. Itās worth noting that I am a giant hypocrite.
To date, I have built a total of 16 automations and sequences in ConvertKit. (Sequences are just a particular type of automation IMO.) Who knows how many hours Iāve spent on them. And to date theyāve served ā¦ about 60 humans?
Good for them, I guessāthey got a series of educational emails, or a few sample chapters of my book.
But realistically, if the net effect was to send a few different emails to 5-10 people a month, I couldāve done that manually. Shouldāve done that manually.
So, moving forward, thatās what Iām going to do.
Iāll still take advantage of ConvertKit for providing an opt-in form ā āplease confirmā ā āhereās a link to the thing I offered in exchange for your email addressā flow. I need to have some sort of measure in place to ensure Iām not wantonly spamming people with my emails, and I donāt want to be on the hook for monitoring my inbox 24/7.
But as for the followupāall those sequences and the elaborate tagging, custom field adjustment, and conditional logic that comprise them, Iām just gonna do it manually. By typing stuff and clicking āsendā.
Hi
name_of_human
, thanks for opting in for the sample chapters of my book. Let me know if you have any questions.
See, that wasnāt hard to type. I can do that 5-10 times a month without hurting myself.
Even as I make this decision, I can feel the lust for scale creeping in. āWhat if it gets out of hand? What if I do a podcast appearance and get 50 signups in a day?ā
The answer is: Iāll spend 20 minutes sending out messages over the next day or two. Itās fine.
I canāt find a source on this but Iāve heard that Noam Chomsky replies to every email he receives, even if itās just from some random reddit user. My assumption is that it takes time, maybe lots of time, but he sees it as worthwhile. I think the same is true for me!
So, hereās to dismantling some automations.