This is probably a very difficult question to answer, because of its subjectivity, but even a vague guess would help me out: Now that Khan Academy is beginning to offer Computer Science lectures I'm getting an itch to learn programming again. I maybe am a bit more technical than your average computer user, using Ubuntu as my OS, LaTeX for writing and I know some small tricks like regular expressions or boolean search for google. However from my previous attempts to learn programming, I realized I do not have a natural aptitude for it and I also don't seem to enjoy the process. But I am fairly certain that a basic proficiency in programming could prove to be very beneficial for me career wise; I also often get ideas for little scripts that I cannot implement.

My question is: Let's say you study programming 1 hour / day on average. At what point will you become good enough so that programming can be used for automating tasks and actually saving time? Do you think programming is worth picking up if you never have the ambition to make it your career or even your hobby, but use it strictly for utility purposes?