Plenty of useful tips from Shawn here on how to use automation tasks as part of your workflow to improve daily productivity:

Computers are great at doing the boring, automated stuff we don’t like to do. So why not automate common tasks (like performing backups of your computer), pre-make decisions for your computer to carry out on your behalf (such as auto-filing certain email newsletters), and generally just find ways to make yourself more efficient?

Good stuff. He makes an interesting point towards the end:

It can be easy to get hyper nerdy about this stuff, and to spend forever and a day tinkering and fiddling and “optimizing”. I listed out the above things not to say that you should be utilizing them as well, but instead to give you an idea of perhaps one or two ways that you could work smarter.

He’s right on the money here, and it made me think of this wonderful xkcd comic from last year:

That could very well serve as a rough guideline, to keep things in perspective before you start going crazy with the automation scripts.