you need to do the hard graft, sometimes
Knowing how to automate is liberating, but avoiding repetitive work doesn't come at zero cost and can quickly have no use if there is no longer any work to do. So sometimes when faced with doing repetitive tasks, it's more useful not to reach for making tools but to simply get on with them. This might also require a change of attitude, to move the goalpost for how much work you think you can tolerate. At the end of the day, the tooling will get you there, but it's the result where the (initial) value lies.