How do you automate your video editing workflow?

I recently realized that I spend a ridiculous amount of time on simple, repetitive tasks — the kind of things that have nothing to do with creativity, yet somehow eat hours every week.

At some point it hit me:
if I don’t automate the boring parts, I won’t have energy left for the real work.

So I started simplifying everything I could.

I reorganized my project structure, made small scripts to clean output folders, set up templates for long videos, and automated parts of my routine inside the editor. Every little improvement removed a bit of mental load.

But the biggest time-sink for me was always the same:
preparing visual footage for long videos like audiobooks, meditation content, commentary, etc.

So I built a small tool to do that part automatically.
Nothing fancy — just something that turns big folders of footage into a clean, ready-to-edit sequence in a few seconds. It doesn’t solve all editing problems, but it eliminated one of the most draining steps for me.

Now I’m curious:

How do you automate your editing workflow?

What repetitive part bothers you the most, and how did you deal with it?
Scripts, presets, templates, custom tools — what’s helped you the most?

Would love to hear your approach.