A Simple Productivity Hack Using Bash Scripts

How to expedite workflows by launching browser tabs from bash scripts.

The problem

A part of my daily workflow is participating in forums. Every morning I read through Hacker News, 8base Community, several different subreddits, StackOverflow, and a few others for an hour. It’s how I like to engage with developers.

There is something merely tedious about this morning routine. Remembering each community forum to visit is a slog. I end up always leaving a dozen or more tabs open in Chrome browser; my computer battery’s lifespan reduces to that of a gnat.

For a hot-second, I became all excited about finding some tab manager. Once that second cooled, I decided that the last thing I wanted was another app/extension in my life. So, I asked myself…

“What’s the most simple solution to track and open my forums every morning?”

The solution

After some brain-storming — a light rain, at best — I decided that I’d try to employ a Bash script. 2-minutes later, everything worked; seriously, it was that simple. Here’s what I did.