Intro#
Smart laziness is a good habit — and yes, it’s actually healthy 😄.
Why should I keep doing the same thing again and again when I can just tell a script to do it for me?
Let the robots work while I enjoy my coffee ☕.
The goal? Get stuff done in less time, with less effort, and make it look perfect while I’m at it. ✅
The Reality: Random Requests From The Boss#
You’re minding your own business, maybe in the middle of fixing something important, when a message pops up:
- “What’s the storage situation on our production servers?”
- “Can you send me the memory usage trend for the last month?”
- “We need to check CPU spikes on all nodes in the cluster.”
- “How many agents are running on the PROD servers right now?”
- “How many 401 errors are in the logs today, and which requests caused them?”
None of these are hard… but they eat time.
Repetitive tasks steal your coffee time… and your Angry Birds time! 🕹☕
The more hours they take, the lower your high score gets 😅.
So, invest that time in automating them — and watch your productivity and your game score go up, buddy 🚀.
My Laziness Rule#
If I’ve done the same thing twice, that’s my sign: time to automate.
Why keep typing the same commands or opening the same servers again and again when I can make a tiny script to do it for me?
Lazy-Smart Things I Actually Use#
- Shell + for loop to send a file to 20 servers without logging into each one like a caveman.
- CPU & Memory check script that tells me what’s eating the resources before I even finish my coffee.
- Ansible Playbook that sets up monitoring agents on RedHat or Ubuntu servers in one go — like magic ✨.
- Log parser that digs out all
401errors from today’s logs and tells me which request caused them — no manual grepping marathon.
Lazy-Smart Legend#
On Medium, a developer wrote about automating a horrible CSV cleanup with a short JavaScript script.
They hit Enter, watched it finish in seconds, and said:
“There’s a moment when you feel unstoppable — like the computer just became your sidekick.”
That’s the kind of win that keeps you hooked on automating everything.
Read the story here →
Why This Works#
- Scripts don’t forget steps.
- They’re faster than me on my best day.
- They give me brain space for cooler stuff.
- I can reuse them forever.
How to Start Being Lazily Smart#
- Keep a little list of boring stuff you do more than once.
- Ask yourself: “Can I script this?” before doing it.
- Reuse your old scripts — don’t start from scratch every time.
- Share them — because lazy-smartness is better when it spreads.
Bonus: Lazy-Smart Example – My 5-Year-Old Downloads Cleaner#
About 5 years ago, I got tired of my Downloads folder, files everywhere, no order, total chaos. So I made a tiny Python script that:
- Has the folder path and file rules hardcoded right in the
.pyfile (e.g.,.zip&.7z→Archives,.jpg→Images). - Creates a dated folder (like
2025-08-15) every time it runs, then sorts everything into its place. - Is set up on a cron job (Linux) or Task Scheduler (Windows) so it runs while I’m busy doing… well, anything else ☕.
No menus. No configs. Just edit → run → clean folder.