Tool for automating set up of a workflow environment?

I often swap between completely unrelated tasks. Some are programming related, some web browser related and some require SSH sessions.

The switching between these tasks can itself be very time consuming and it is mentally draining to always do this manually.

So is there any way, preferably in Ubuntu/Linux where you can define different applications start on certain positions of the screen, certain files to be opened depending on which workflow you want to be working with?

Would be a huge productivity booster.