A faster tool can accelerate the wrong task beautifully.

Efficiency has no opinion about direction. Automating a report nobody reads means producing it faster and more often. Most tooling improves the speed of whatever you point it at, and the pointing is the part that actually determines whether the effort was worth anything.

Before optimizing something, spend a moment on whether it needs doing at all. Elimination beats acceleration every time. The most valuable question about a recurring task is not how to do it faster but who would notice if it stopped.