Designing a product that needs little manual work
4 min read
I ran herolister.com from 2017 until I sold it in 2025. The most useful thing I learned from those years is not a technology. It is a way of organising work: design the product and your routine so that very little depends on you doing something by hand.
Fewer manual steps
Every manual step is a place where something can be forgotten or done wrong. When I notice that I do the same thing twice, I automate it. I do this in my work and in my daily life, and it applies to a product the same way.
The goal is not clever automation. It is to remove the steps, so a person only gets involved when a decision is needed.
Fixed hours
I work in fixed time blocks, not in reaction to whatever arrives. Planned hours for planned work keep the rest of the day free of interruptions, and they make it easy to tell when something is taking more time than it should.
What this means for a team
- A process with fewer manual steps has fewer errors and fewer people who must remember what to do.
- Predictable routines make delivery predictable.
- Work that is automated once keeps paying back, while work that is done by hand has to be paid for again every time.
These habits are what I bring to a team: I look for the repeated work, make it automatic, and keep the focus on the result.