One of the things that I have enjoyed most about switching computers at the beginning of college is the little automation features included in MacOS. While most of these, such as an intuitive way to change keyboard shortcuts, switch between desktops, and use different trackpad gestures, have simplified my workflow, there was one design that I dearly missed from Windows: opening an application in full screen by default. With apps downloaded from the Mac App Store, there was a way to toggle this generally in settings, but there is no such option for programs downloaded from the internet, such as Google Chrome.

After asking friends on and off for years if they knew of a solution, I decided to take matters into my own hands using some rare free time I had at the start of this summer. I played around with a few different tools, before finding an article on Google that seemed to contain instructions for how to do something similar to my goal. A few hours later, I had modified it to work on my device, writing some extra lines of Apple Script and working through various bugs. Finally, I customized its icon and set the newly created program on my dock. Now, with a single click, I can both open Chrome and set it in full screen mode.

This is a task that is certainly quite trivial, only adding a single extra click every time I start working on my computer. While such small tasks do not take up that much time or energy, the distraction when trying to get focused on work, compounded over years, is certainly non-trivial. Similar to minimalist backpacking, "ounces turn into pounds, and pounds turn into pain." Only in this case, ounces are the small hurdles we cross when trying to accomplish something meaningful. Although the world is no better off for me having implemented this script, it just might be a little kinder due to the meaningful work that humanity can accomplish when we free our time from small distractions of daily life. With this new found freedom, we can choose to focus on the things that matter most to us-be it family, meaningful work, or enjoying the world's beauty.

Of course, we have to intentionally make that choice, resisting the temptation to fill our extra minutes with mindless binge watching of TV, scrolling through social media, or other relatively meaningless tasks. But, the only way we can choose a life of meaning is if we are free of other burdens in the first place, both burdens of necessity, like the need for food and shelter, as well as burdens of society, such as forms and inefficient structures. Not all burdens are bad, but automating out the ones which do not contribute to our overall growth, might just be worth the effort.

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Photo is of some fake food that restaurants can display in their shop windows. Apparently doing so is very popular in Japan, as they have whole stores dedicated to it, even in places with lots of tourists (this one is from the mall inside Tokyo Skytree). If anyone would like the script I made, just ask and I can help you get it set up.