How Shortcuts literally changed someone's life for the better

My favorite new automations in Shortcuts in iOS 14 (Image credit: Joseph Keller / iMore)

What you need to know

One Reddit user reports that they used Shortcuts to impress their boss and get a new role.
They used Shortcuts to drastically reduce the time it took to create reports.
Reports that previously took hours to create were cut down to mere minutes.

Apple's Shortcuts app and framework have been a real boon for people looking to get into automation, but one person took things a step further and used them to get a new job, earn more money, and get away from a week of back-breaking work in the process.

Reddit user AngriBuddhist posted to share details about how Shortcuts improved his life by helping them move from a job that was all-out manual labor, replacing it with a role that allows him to work from home instead.

According to the post, the writer was able to greatly reduce the amount of time-intensive business reports took to put together by automating the process using Shortcuts. Reports that would take hours to collate were cut down to just minutes.

Prior to being a Workflow/Shortcuts user, the closest thing to automation/scripting that I'd done is make some pretty in-depth spreadsheets. For the last 5 years, though, I've been using Shortcuts to create daily reports for work. Manually, these would take more than 24 hours a day. I do them in 10-20 minutes. I've created other weekly reports that would also take more than 24 hours to create manually. With Shortcuts, it takes about 5 minutes.

After the big impact the addition of Shortcuts had on a manager's workload, AngriBuddhist was given a promotion that allows them to work three days per week from home, doing admin work, without any reduction in pay. They can even continue to do their previous manual labor role for two days per week, increasing their pay as a result. And all because they used Shortcuts to run some reports.

The internet is full of people sharing stories of how Shortcuts has been able to help them automate laborious tasks, but this is the first time I've seen someone get real-world financial gain from using it. Top marks, AngriBuddhist!

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.