I literally spend more time updating the firmware on my Mavic Pro than i do flying the thing.  Any tricks people have found that can make this process less painful?

Put your phone in flight mode before powering up the drone then you would not get the firmware reminder

Are you talking about the firmware for the craft/controller or the DJI GO 4 updates?  It has been many months since a firmware update for the craft/controller so as long as you do it once you should be good.  

Yeah, don't do them

About only thing I can tell helps, for download part, is using a fast ISP connection (+100 Mbps) vs. slower ISP connection (10 Mbps).  

On a slower connection, Assistant-2 will time-out and hang on download.  Part of problem is not user side, but DJI's overall slow servers.