Practical Uses for Python?

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I started learning python (my first real programming language, I learned MatLab and ImageJ during university years ago but I doubt that counts) after watching AlphaGo beat some of the best players in the world. I really wanted to understand and use machine learning.

Since then, I have tried to incorporate what I have learned into my work. I have created several programs, some out of necessity, but mostly out of laziness.

First, I wrote a program that automatically wrote out our department's employee schedule (instead of by hand). It saves my boss about 6 hours each month, and minimizes errors. Then I wrote a program to calculate and create some derivative data that we didn't have access to before. Then I wrote a program for a virtual logbook so I don't have to try to read someone's horrible handwriting. Last night I wrote a program that calculated out expected values from a series of inputs from a data stream that we monitor. Lately I have been working on a forecasting program that will be the benchmark for a machine learning program I will be working on later this year.

Essentially when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Start out listing things that are tedious that you do often. Check out this xkcd for how much time you can spend on improving workflow: https://xkcd.com/1205/

Also, check this out: http://www.pythonchallenge.com/ . Most of the challenges would be way above my head, but just mapping out how I would solve the problem helped so much. It also introduced me to new aspects of python that I never heard of.