用自动化接管琐事，我成了更好的领导者

Here’s the thing about senior leadership that nobody warns you about: the job isn’t hard because of any single task. It’s hard because your work lives in fifteen different places and your brain is the only system connecting them. Meetings bleed into each other. Decisions are made in threads without you. Someone mentioned your name in a planning meeting, and now there’s an action item living in a doc you’ve never seen. You’ll find out about it in two weeks when someone casually asks for an update. Fun. Last year, my team almost missed a performance review deadline because it was announced in a channel nobody was watching. One person spent ten minutes searching Slack and couldn’t find it. Another found the date in a random, unrelated channel. I ended up posting “I’ll admit we dropped the ball on following up in Slack, so that’s on me.” That’s the kind of thing that keeps happening when your brain is the only system connecting everything. I was spending so much energy on context-switching that I had nothing left for the thinking, connecting, and creating that my role actually requires (and that’s the work I actually like doing). But I started using automations in the GitHub Copilot app, and it changed my entire workflow. Bear with me. What automations actually are The GitHub Copilot app is a standalone desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, built for working with agents, not just talking to them. You can run parallel sessions across repositories, each on its own branch and worktree. You can see what agents are doing in real time through canvases, which are bidirectional work surfaces where you and the agent operate on the same plan, terminal, or browser session. Progress is visible and steerable, not buried in chat history. Automations are scheduled prompts that run against your real work context: your calendar, your email, your messages, your GitHub repos. They connect through MCP servers and integrations, so they can see what’s happening across all the places your work lives. They tell me what actually needs my attention, which lets me ignore the rest. Think of them as agents with a standing brief. You tell them what to care about, how to think, and when to run. Then they just… do it. Every day. Without you remembering to ask. Which is good, because you won’t. What this looks like I’m a senior director at GitHub. I lead developer relations. My scope is wide, my calendar is full, and my brain works differently than most people assume. I’m AuDHD, which means I’m good at pattern recognition and deep focus, but genuinely terrible at remembering which thread I promised to follow up on three days ago. I didn’t set out to build 40 automations. I was curious about the automations tab, asked the app what it could do, and it suggested things I hadn’t thought of. The first time I set one up, I opened a chat and said something like: “Look across all of my work surfaces, my calendar, my email, my messages, and figure out where I’m dropping balls, where I might need help, and suggest automations that would be useful.” It immediately suggested about six. The first drafts weren’t perfect, and that’s okay. You refine them. You give them voice. You teach them how you think. Once I saw what was possible, I kept going. Now I have about 40. (I know. I know.) I’m not going to walk through all of them. (You’re welcome.) But here are the categories that matter most, and some highlights from each. The morning brief Every day before I open anything, several automations have already run. Meeting Prep pulls my calendar and builds context for every meeting, with different formats for one-on-ones vs. large syncs vs. external calls. By the time I sit down, I know what each meeting is about and what I need to bring. Pre-Meeting Access Check verifies I actually have access to the docs and links referenced in the invite. No more showing up and realizing the agenda doc is locked. If you’ve never experienced that particular panic, honestly, must be nice. Daily Triage Digest sweeps GitHub, email, and messages for anything that needs my attention. The cumulative effect is that my mornings went from “frantically opening twelve tabs while pretending I’ve read the agenda” to “reading a few summaries with coffee.” It’s a different life. Staying current I cannot be surprised by our own launches. That’s literally the job. Ship Decoder finds everything GitHub shipped in the last 24 hours and explains it to me in plain language. This is real context I can use in conversations. Launch Radar runs weekly and surfaces upcoming launches that touch my team’s space so I’m never blindsided. These two alone probably save me an hour a day of scrolling through channels trying to piece together what happened. I used to spend that hour. I did not enjoy that hour. Career architecture This is the category that surprised me most. I built automations that actively work on career development, and if that sounds weird, stay with me. Daily Wins Recap runs every evening and summarizes what I actually accomplished. This one matters more than it sounds. My default mode is to check something off and immediately move to the next thing. I don’t sit with it. I don’t recognize it. I just keep going. Then performance review season comes around. I have to articulate my impact, and I’m panic-staring at a blank doc trying to remember eight months of work. This automation keeps a running record so I don’t have to. Think of it as a gratitude practice backed by real data rather than a task list. It counters the “what did I even do today?” spiral that hits hardest on the busy days. On the days when imposter syndrome is loud, I need something that talks back to it with facts. The robot believes in me even when I don’t. That’s oddly moving? I don’t know. It works. Team and people This is where I want to be really honest, because I know you might be thinking: is she automating the human parts of her job? No. And that distinction matters to me more than anything else in this post. Commitments and Follow-Up Tracker searches my own messages for things I said I’d do and flags what I haven’t done yet. This one is humbling. And essential. Because when I tell someone “I’ll look into this” and then forget, that’s a trust problem. The automation protects the trust. The kudos I write are still mine. The noticing is still mine. The automation just makes sure my brain doesn’t steal it from the people who deserve it. These automations don’t replace connection. They enable it. They give me back the headspace to actually show up for people. Before this system, I’d walk into conversations distracted or running on fumes, because my brain was full of operational noise. Now when I sit down in a one-on-one, I’m actually present. When I write recognition for my team, it’s specific and real. The automations handle the scaffolding. I do the human work. That’s the deal. Maintenance and logistics This category covers the boring stuff that quietly eats your week if you let it: Dependabot PR Triage finds and merges safe dependency updates across my repos daily. Handled. Stale Work Finder surfaces pull requests I opened and forgot, issues that went quiet, branches collecting dust. (We all have those. Don’t lie.) Travel Logistics Tracker watches for conference-related threads and consolidates logistics into a single brief. Conference season is chaos. This helps. What my automations look like Here’s a real one from my setup, the Stale Work Finder, so you can see what these prompts actually look like in practice: Find all my stale work across GitHub using the gh CLI. Things that are falling through the cracks. Check for: - PRs I opened that haven't received a review in 7+ days - PRs I'm assigned to review that I haven't reviewed yet (older than 3 days) - Issues assigned to me that have had no activity in 14+ days - Draft PRs I own that have been drafts for 2+ weeks - For each item show: repo, title, link, how long it's been stale, and who's involved. Format a

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