8 Tips for Automating Your Morning Routine on Your Mac

Transcription

1 8 Tips for Automating Your Morning Routine on Your Mac MacAutomationTips.com Bakari Chavanu

2 The following are eight basic basic and few advance ways to use automation to get get your morning started on your Mac. My blog, Mac Automation Tips goes into more detail about the tips and applications I suggest below, but this guide is geared toward Mac users who have't yet taken advantage of the automation programs availble both in the Mac and ones developed by third-party developers. Tip 1: Setting Up Login Items Startup: If you boot your computer every morning, hopefully you have it set up to restart automatically. If not, simply launch System Preferences > Energy Saver, and then click the Schedule button. You can schedule the time you want your Mac to start or wake while you re getting your first cup of coffee, for example. Even even you leave your computer on most of them, the System Wake should still be used, especially because it will allow for other applications that refer to below to run at at a particular time. You also want to make sure you have assigned some of your most regularly used applications to automatically launch when logging into your Mac (or when your computer logs in for you.) MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 1

3 Launch System Preferences > Users & Groups, and then click on the Login Items button. Here you can add the applications you want to open at login. Don't add too many, but just the ones you need to have already launched. Tip 2: Open Webpages Also notice in the screenshot above that it says login items, and not just applications. So you can actually have designated webpages, files, or folders launch after you login. To set this up, first open the web pages in your default web browser. Create a new folder on your desktop, and give it a title, such as Automatic Webpages. Next, click on and drag the icon and URL for each webpage into the folder. MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 2

4 Put the folder of webpages in your Documents or Applications folder so they won t be accidentally deleted. Now, add each webpage to your Login Items list as you do with applications. Note: If you don t want to use the Login items for opening webpages, you can create a folder of bookmarked webpages in Safari that you typically use on a regular basis. Then all you need to do it navigate to the folder in your browser, and then select "Open In New Tabs". All your pages will be opened with one click. MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 3

5 Tip 3: Timed Triggers with Keyboard Maestro The above methods are the built-in solutions for login items, but if you want the real power of Mac automation, you should download an application called Keyboard Maestro, which is available for free trial download. Keyboard Maestro (KM) has tons of features and actions, but if you use it for nothing else, you should use it for timed triggers. With timed triggers, KM will launch assigned applications, webpages, and files based on the day and time you set, as long as your Mac is on. See my article, Automate Your Week Using Keyboard Maestro Time Triggers for more info. MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 4

6 Tip 4: Previous Mail Recipients Smart Mailboxes are a powerful tool for organizing your s in Mail. But for the purposes of your morning routine, I suggest creating a Previous Receipients folder. This rule captures s from any sender that you previously ed back to. More than likely, those contacts are important to you, especially in the morning or throughout the day. My rule is set up to copy those previous recepients s to a regular Mail folder I named "Previous". That way I can delete messages from the Previous folder without the deleting the original message. My goal is to clear that Previous folder out within two days by either responding to the message or deleting it. Note: In Mail, go to Windows > Previous Recipients to remove contacts from your list to that you don't want to show up in your Previous folder. Tip 5: Mark As Read One more Mail rule that I use automatically marks all my incoming Mail as read if the sender is not in my Contacts list or is not a prevous recipient. I use this rule because it keeps me from having to mark dozens of mostly unimportant s as read. At the MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 5

7 end of the day, s marked read in my Indbox or Today's folder. Smart Mailboxes are the best feature in Mail for managing s. See Tame Your Mac Inbox With This Previous Recipients Smart Mailbox for more info. MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 6

8 Tip 6: Desktop Cleanup Another application that you should have for automating your Mac is Hazel, which is also available for free trial download. Hazel is a folder actions application which allows you to set up rules for designated folders. Your rules will be triggered in the background. One basic rule to use is for keeping your desktop clear of old files. Since I work at my Mac throughout the day, I have Hazel clear off my files every hour and move them to my Junk folder. But the rule can be set for longer or even shorter times as short as a minute or as long as year. This desktop cleanup workflow is easy to assemble, and you can download a trial version of Hazel to test it out. Tip 7: Recurring To-dos If you're not already doing so, start developing a list of recurring to-do items in a todo manager. When you create a recurring to-do items, you don't have to think about MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 7

9 those tasks agian until they arrive in your to-do box. I have about 50 recurring to-dos (bills, website updates, recurring projects) that run weekly, monthly, and yearly. 2Do is my application of choice, but Wunderlist, OmniFocus, and Todoist also include recurring tasks features. MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 8

10 Tip 8: Track Your Time Finally, use an application called Timing to keep track of what you're doing while at your computer. Timing monitors your activities in the background as you work, and you can group different activities into projects and tasks to get a tally of the time you spend working on various tasks and projects. Learn More I hope you found these tips and suggestions helpful as a Mac user. This guide represents just a few things that are possible with using Mac automation programs like Keyboard Maestro, TextExpander, Alfred, BetterTouchTool, Automator, Hazel, Smart Folders, Dragon Dictate, and SuperTab. The more you these applications, you can begin reducing lots of clicking, pressing keyboard shortcuts, and performing redundant tasks. MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 9

11 I look forward to your feedback, comments and experiences with Mac automation. You can ask me questions by reaching me through my Ask Mac Automator page. MACAUTOMATIONTIPS.COM 10