Need a Productivity Hack? Learn Make
It is easy to have projects that start with a simple file and then grow to a mess. Then you end up spending more time organizing and managing the project than actually working on it.
I’ve been creating run.sh files where I would manage my project for many years now. But it was just another aspect of the project that needed to be maintained. At some point I realized that I was already using Makefiles for coding project, so why not use them for everything else?
Now every project, from coding to writing, to experimenting with some crazy idea, starts with a Makefile. I use it to manage the project, to run scripts, to build the project, and to clean up.
If you want to start out using Makefiles, the GNU Manual is good read. On the other hand if you want to learn Make by example, there’s Makefile tutorial.