A small tip to improve productivity in doing repetitive tasks

Hello everyone, in this blog post I would like to share with you my experience in improving the productivity in doing some certain repetitive tasks. 

Today, I was working on converting a bunch of files from one format to the other format, and there are multiple steps for converting each file. For example the whole job is to perform a sequence of (task 1 -> task 2 -> task 3) repetitively n number of times. 

Of course, if the tasks are scriptable and the effort to write the script is small, then go for it. But not everything is scriptable. Also, if you have more than one person then doing the pipeline strategy is definitely the best way to handle these jobs. 

When the tasks are not scriptable and you only have yourself, then doing the first task n number of times before moving on to the second task for n number of times is a better strategy than finishing the sequence task 1, task 2, task 3 then go back to task 1 for the next round. The reason is that you utilize the short term memory and muscle memory to finish all task 1 repeatedly n times instead of switching your brain and muscle from task 1 to task 2 then task 3 and then back to task 1 again. 

Overall, when you encounter these situations, my advice is to examine the productivity of your process and see if there is room for improvement. The effort in thinking a better strategy to improve your productivity is always worth it.