Automation
I’m not very good at it, but I’m fascinated by the idea of automating tasks on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. On iOS I’ve played with Shortcuts (formerly Workflow). It is great to answer some questions and have my substitute teaching jobs automatically ready to go into my Fantastical calendar. Another one I like is launching an app from my iPhone, choosing the playlist I want, the iPhone starts playing the playlist, and then opens the Music app so I can see what is playing. Other people have made some amazingly complex shortcuts that you can download on to your device. One creates a PDF outlining the top songs you listened to last year. Another one even creates a Name That Tune-style game that you can play with your music library.
There are more options on the Mac. Built-in to every Mac is Automator where you can create apps and services. This one is more limited and a little harder to use though. Third party options bring a lot more power in apps like Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Text Expander, and Better Touch Tool. Keyboard Maestro is great at assigning keyboard shortcuts to different actions or groups of actions on the Mac. For instance, when I create a Screencast, I can quit every app, hide the Dock, and hide everything on my desktop by pressing Command+Control+Option Q and then restore everything by pressing Command+Control+Option Up Arrow. Hazel will organize your folders for you by moving files into correct categories. Text Expander is great for the words and phrases you type all the time to come up in just a few keystrokes. Better Touch Tool gives more power to your Mouse and Trackpad by enabling more actions to get done by tap or a mouse click.
The downside to working with some of these tools is that often you need to think like a programmer which is hard to do if you don’t have the training. If you study what other people have created, you can get better and of course there are a lot of tutorials online. One nice thing is that most of these apps let you share your creations with everyone on the Internet.