If you don't want to open this and solder a chip, then no, you can't do what you want.

The closest you can get is to enable AutoRCM, which will cause the Switch to always boot into recovery mode and accept a payload. This skips the need to use a jig in the Joy-Con rail, but you still need to inject a payload. And because recovery mode is just a black screen, you don't have any visual feedback to know if the Switch is actually in recovery mode, or if the battery is just dead.

Your best option is to just boot into whatever OS you use most, then make it a habit to keep it charged enough to not shut down.

My experience is that I only have to do anything if it shuts all the way down. You can reboot from the power menu and it goes back to selecting which firmware to boot.

I don't ever use the regular firmware on it though.

Boot it once, don't let it ever fully power down (suspend is fine).

If your V1 is on firmware 3.1 or 4.1 but does not work with the RCM jig and you have run your serial ID through the test site and it comes up as "possibly ipatched", you might be able to use "online boot" via Pegascape, which you can also host locally (eg.: in a raspberry pi) and there is at least one alternative frontend. It's pretty much the only way to boot an ipatched > 3.x into hekate without a hardmod, and even then it's only limited to firmware 4.x that I know.

(On such a setup, you'd then install an eMMC partition for CFW with the firmware you want, eg.: 16.x).

Do you have a proper Jig like this (Aliexpress link)? I find that just having that makes injecting much less of an inconvenience for me

You would need to get an actual modchip and solder it on.

https://gbatemp.net/download/a-definitive-picofly-install-guide.37968/