My attitude is that I'd rather spend the time creating a standardised way of retrieving the information in future and produce an easy output than spend the time trying to go directly to the output but needing to spend the same amount of time doing it next quarter.

The ethos of effective I think is summed up by Abraham Lincoln: Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

The next tree would only take two maybe three hours (including top-up sharpening) thus saving you at least 50% of the time for each tree cut down in future - awesome eh? If only he knew about a chainsaw - but then that just goes to say the right tool can save so much effort

I fully believe in automating repetitive tasks and I believe people who keep things manual must do so because they realise they don't add value in the eyes of their customers.

I have a never ending list of work that as fast as I can automate it, users are asking for new things that get tacked on to the back of the queue. There are two reasons:

1) I increase people's appetite for my product i.e. reports and database improvements by delivering what they need, not just just what they want, and educating them on how we could make their reporting more effective

2) The business is always generating amendments to existing processes and creating new ones. No business is static and as such even if you can't users actively wanting work from you, surely you have enough on your plate with keeping pace with business change?