If you right-click the frame and press the A key, that will Activate the frame.
Also don't forget that nearly every command can be assigned to a hotkey of your choosing. While I don't share your exact situation, there are a number of commands that are usually two to three clicks away that are much more common to my workflow than the "typical user", I suppose. I assign these to their own hotkeys, occasionally overwriting the default hotkeys that I don't use. Makes things much nicer.
Also, I like to keep my relevant panes up, so that when a map frame is activated, my edit / create tools are already there, and I don't even need to worry about the ribbon. If I hit a situation where my hotkeys don't apply, the command I need is probably already on-screen and one or two clicks away.
Another tip: scrolling with your mouse on the ribbon moves through the tabs. I personally find this less useful, as I tend to overshoot my intended tab and spend more time flipping around than I would have just clicking the tab. But maybe that's just me!
Lastly, if you have "fixed center and scale" enabled on your map frame, it will not zoom or pan when activated. "Locking" it just prevents editing of the element itself. And while the normal panning/zooming commands will be specific to the map, you can still use the scroll bars to move the layout around while a frame is active.
Hopefully some of that helps you! Anything that cuts down on mouse action is a good thing!
- Josh Carlson
Kendall County GIS