Let Python handle the boring stuff!

How I Automate 5 Annoying Tasks with Python (So I Never Have to Do Them Again!)

Here’s how I use Python to automate 5 annoying tasks – so I never have to do them manually again!

Photo by Julian Myles on Unsplash

Let’s be real — there are tasks we do repeatedly that drain our time and energy. Whether it’s renaming files, sorting emails, or filling out tedious reports, these small annoyances add up. As a developer, I hate wasting time on repetitive work when I know Python can do it for me.

So, I automated five of the most annoying tasks I used to do manually. Now, I never have to think about them again. Here’s how you can do the same.

1. Renaming Hundreds of Files in Seconds

Ever had a folder full of files with weird names that you needed to rename? Maybe you downloaded images with long, unreadable names or exported reports with inconsistent naming.

Manually renaming them is painful, but Python’s os and glob modules make it effortless.

How I Automated It

I wrote a script that renames all files in a folder based on a pattern I define.

import os  

folder_path = "/Users/Aashish/Downloads"  

for index, filename in enumerate(os.listdir(folder_path), start=1):  
    new_name = f"report_{index}.pdf"  
    old_path = os.path.join(folder_path, filename)  
    new_path = os.path.join(folder_path, new_name)  
    os.rename(old_path, new_path)  

print("Renaming complete!")

Now, all my files are neatly named as report_1.pdf, report_2.pdf, etc. No more dealing with messy filenames!

2. Automatically Organizing Downloaded Files

My downloads folder used to be a chaotic mess — PDFs, images, ZIP files, and random documents all mixed together. Instead of manually sorting them, I let Python handle it.

How I Automated It