Dynamic automator dashboards for your calender, email, chat, and other nonsense communication.

Typically a software engineer has a development environment open.  Thats one window.

But then, they need a browser, thats two.

Then you've got slack.  Three.

And your Web browser.

What about Email?

And your calender !!!

So, this turns into an N-windows problem, except, lets be realistic, the amount of time you spend looking at these looks something like this:

Email       10%
Calender   10%
Browser     10%
Chat client 10%
IDE    60%

So, its really wasteful to use 4 monitors when one of them just has a bunch of "dead windows" on it.

BUT NEVERTHELESS, ITS IMPORTANT TO CHECK YOUR EMAIL, CALENDER EVERY 5 minutes or so, right?

The solution: Use automator (os x).  I'm sure theres something similar you can do on your OS of choice.

0) Designate a 'dashboard laptop'

1) Put your email, calender on one screen

2) Put your chat client, and any other dashboard (i.e. github w/ auto reload issues) on the other screen.

3) Now create the following automator script:

repeat

delay 30

tell application "System Events" to key code 18 using control down

delay 60

tell application "System Events" to key code 19 using control down

end repeat

This will create a 'dashboard' that swaps back and forth between your two first desktops, so that your calender and email are continuously swapping back and forth every 60 / 30 seconds.  This means you can use your 'main' development machine for high-focus tasks, and for meeting/email checking, you can look over at your dashboard during coffee breaks etc.