The first and second times I do something, I do them manually. The third time, I create a repeatable procedure that I execute manually. The third time I use tha

The first and second times I do something, I do them manually. The third time, I create a repeatable procedure that I execute manually. The third time I use that, I start writing scripts to take bites out of the time it takes. Around the 30th or so time I have to do it, there's no point to automating any further. But I've learned that automating to the point where you can put it on a cron job is usually just not worth it. You haven't yet squeezed out all the failure cases. If you could have completely scripted it and put it on a cron job you would have done it at the beginning. Usually when I find myself doing this, I'm doing it in response to emails that have been sent with spreadsheets. It's a huge time pit to automate that the first time you get one. You just don't know what they're going to keep sending you each month, and you feel like such an asshole nagging them about it. Just make a note in your procedure, and use an error to detect the case when you finally script it.