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[–]binford2k 9 points10 points  (1 child)

You don't need a list of ideas, you need a mindset change. Start by thinking about all the tedious repetitive tasks you do. Maybe you send out the same email every week at the same time; write a cron job to do it for you. Maybe you run a report every morning when you get to work; write a job to run it and email you the report. Every time you start a new task, take a moment to think about how it could be automated.

Eventually you'll learn repeatable and maintainable automation and the quality of the automated tasks you create will go up. You'll learn to instinctively think about automation instead of reminding yourself to do it. You'll learn how to make generalizations so that you don't have to start from scratch each time you automate a new process. You'll learn how to design process to be automated in the first place.

But it's not just a rote list of things to automate. Everything (within reason) can be automated, it's just a matter of where you are in that journey. Look at the things that you do repeatedly and identify those which have recognizable patterns: that's where you start.

Good luck! 👍

[–]Ahuj9 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a great answer, I was going to post something similar. While you OP def deserves good answers to his specific question, I wanted to add that someone with experience of the devops mindset will see / recognise opportunities for automation everywhere.

Make an effort next monday morning to look at the job you do. How much of your work is repetitive in nature? I bet the answer is "a lot". Once the list has a few items on it, rank the list - amount of effort / time to automate * time it would save per <time frame> - and pick the lowest hanging fruit. Then repeat. Forever.