A Look Back on 7 Years of Automating Stuff

A candid reflection on automating day-to-day

Photo by kub liz on Unsplash

A little bit more than 7 years into my career, I thought it would be fun to pen down a summary post about my adventure in automating various tiny aspects of my life. Most if not all of the stuff here sprouted from my own problems and itches I needed to scratch.

This post will probably read more like a personal diary of the minor nuances that I encountered and the sweet minutes/hours that I managed to snatch back through automation.

On to the first one –

Six Percent: Automating ASNB Purchases

2018–2022

The startup window of the bot. This was the first thing that I’ve made that people actually use.

It all started with this Python script called “six-percent”, a seemingly dumb bot to click buttons for some investment.

For context, ASNB a unit trust management company offers a fixed-price fund (i.e. it can never go up or down!) that promised a sweet 6% p.a. dividend back then. It’s virtually risk-free.

Well, there was a catch. The limited funds pool meant that it was selling like hotcakes — you had to keep retrying to snag those…