Six ways to automate these annoying tasks

You know what's worse than hard work? Annoying work. The kind of tasks that aren't difficult, they're just tedious. Remembering to pay bills. Syncing three different calendars. Organizing photos. Figuring out what's for dinner. Again.

These aren't the big productivity challenges. They're the tiny frustrations that add up until you're stressed about things that shouldn't even be on your mental to-do list.

Luckily, IFTTT (If This Then That) exists specifically to handle this stuff. Connect your apps and devices once so you can stop thinking about the annoying things ever again.

This is about eliminating the small irritations that slowly drain your energy every single day.

Six annoying things you can automate right now

1. Stop staring at your fridge wondering what to cook

It's 6PM. You're hungry. You open the fridge and stare blankly at random ingredients. Nothing looks good. You end up ordering takeout for the third time this week.

Meal planning sounds great in theory, but who has time to sit down every Sunday and map out seven days of meals? And even if you do, you still need to figure out what you already have and what you need to buy.

Top Applets for meal planning and recipes

1. Generate a meal plan for the week with Anthropic Claude. Every Sunday at 8AM, it creates a full meal plan (breakfast, lunch, dinner, plus a shopping list). Add dietary requirements or macro goals right in the prompt and it tailors everything to you.

2. Already have ingredients, but no idea what to make? List your ingredients and receive a recipe. Type what's in your fridge, and get an actual recipe back. No more throwing random things together and hoping Gordon Ramsay doesn't materialize in your kitchen to yell about it.

3. And when you can't even deal with cooking? Use the "I don't care where we go for dinner" button and get a restaurant suggestion with one tap.

4. Want healthier meal ideas without paying for a meal service? Get a weekly email with the top posts from the r/EatCheapAndHealthy subreddit. Real people sharing budget-friendly, healthy recipes that actually work. Your meal planning handles itself while you do literally anything else.

2. Your photo library is a mess (let's fix it)

You take a photo. It goes into your camera roll. You tell yourself you'll organize it later. You never organize it later. Now you have 8,000 photos with names like "IMG_4729" and no idea what half of them are.

Finding specific photos becomes an archaeological dig. That receipt you need? Buried. That whiteboard from a meeting three months ago? Good luck. You know you took it, but where is it?

Applets to organize and name your photos

1. For iOS users, any new image added to a specific album gets processed by Claude, given a descriptive title, and saved to Google Drive. Your photos actually have names that make sense.

2. Android users get the same treatment: all new images get processed by Claude, named properly, and saved to Google Drive. Your entire photo library becomes searchable and organized without you doing anything.

3. Want to stop losing important photos in the endless scroll? Photos you’re tagged in on Facebook can automatically save to a dedicated album in iOS Photos. Group shots, event photos, and the things other people take for you end up somewhere predictable instead of scattered across apps.

4. Screenshots pile up fast: boarding passes, confirmation numbers, recipes, things you meant to come back to later. Automatically send all new screenshots into their own iOS Photos album so they’re easy to find when you actually need them and easy to ignore the rest of the time.

3. Stop juggling five different calendars

Work calendar. Personal calendar. Shared family calendar. That freelance project calendar. Maybe a separate one for the gym. They're all slightly out of sync and you're constantly double-booking yourself or missing things entirely.

You've tried keeping everything in one calendar, but some things have to live in specific systems. Your work uses Microsoft. Your family uses Google. Your freelance client insists on an Apple Calendar. You're stuck manually copying events between them like it's 2005.

Suggested Applets for calendar syncing

1. Sync your Google Calendar and iOS Calendar so anything you add in one shows up in the other. This keeps your schedule consistent without having to manually recreate the same event twice or think about which calendar you used.

2. When you add a task in Todoist with a due date, it can automatically appear on your Google Calendar. Your to-do list and your schedule stay connected, making it easier to plan your day realistically instead of juggling two separate systems.

3. You can keep your iOS Calendar and Microsoft 365 Calendar in sync so personal plans and work meetings appear together. Seeing everything in one place helps you understand what your day actually looks like.

4. If you want to know what the weather looks like without opening a separate app, you can add the day’s forecast to your Google Calendar each morning. It shows up alongside your meetings, so it’s easy to plan what to wear or how to commute.

4. Stop worrying about lost files

You know you should backup your files. You know this. But actually doing it? That requires remembering to do it, then manually selecting everything, then waiting for uploads, then hoping you didn't miss anything important.

So you don't do it. And then your computer crashes, or your phone dies, or you accidentally delete something crucial, and you realize you haven't backed up anything in six months.

File backup Applets

1. Automatically sync new files added to Dropbox to your Google Drive. Anything you save in Dropbox gets copied over in the background, so you have a second copy without changing how you already work.

2. Sync new files added to Dropbox to OneDrive. Keeping your files in more than one system gives you a fallback if one service is down or something goes wrong.

3. Backup Dropbox files to Box. Files are duplicated across platforms as they’re added, which reduces the risk of losing something important to a single device or account issue.

4. Share files in Slack from a Dropbox folder. Files added to a specific folder can post directly into a chosen Slack channel, keeping everyone updated.

5. Actually remember to pay your bills

You get the bill and tell yourself you’ll handle it later. Later shows up, something else grabs your attention, and suddenly it’s past due. Not because you couldn’t pay it, but because remembering it wasn’t the priority in that moment.

Even when you do stay on top of things, it usually means logging into multiple sites, setting reminders that may or may not fire at the right time, and repeating the whole process again next month.

Bill reminder Applets

1. For now, simple reminders cover a lot of ground. Get a notification every month when rent is due so it doesn’t slip past you.

2. If you prefer something harder to ignore, you can send yourself a monthly payment reminder via SMS. It’s not fully automated bill pay, but it does take remembering out of the equation, which is usually the real problem.

6. Stop forgetting to clean things

Most home maintenance isn’t hard, it’s just invisible until it becomes a problem. Filters clog slowly. Machines get louder over time. By the time something feels off, it’s usually overdue.

Your vacuum filter needs changing. Your dishwasher needs cleaning. The air purifier filter has probably been overdue for a while. These are all things you know you’re supposed to stay on top of, but there’s nothing in your day that reminds you to actually do it.

Home maintenance Applets

1. If you use a Home Connect Washer, you can log how often it runs so you have a clear record of usage over time. Instead of guessing when it might need attention, you can see how frequently it’s been used and clean it accordingly.

2. With a Home Connect Dryer, a notification when the dryer’s lint filter is full instead of discovering it when clothes take twice as long to dry.

3. If you use a WeMo Coffeemaker, you can get notified when the water filter needs to be replaced. It’s an easy thing to put off, but it directly affects how your coffee tastes.

4. For GE Appliances Dishwasher, you can receive an SMS when the filter needs cleaning. Instead of noticing after dishes start coming out cloudy, you get a heads-up while everything is still working as expected.

Make the annoying stuff disappear

Stop wasting energy on tasks that don't deserve your attention.

IFTTT makes it simple: use already published Applets or create custom workflows in seconds. No coding, no tech expertise, just pick your trigger and action.

The goal isn't to automate everything. It's to automate the stuff that makes you say "ugh, I have to do this again?" Pick one annoyance from this list and make it disappear. Then pick another. Your future self will thank you.

Start a free trial of IFTTT Pro and start automating!