There is a preference for Special:Watchlist which you can set for yourself on [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist]] or for everyone with $wgDefaultUserOptions
but it's already default:
$wgDefaultUserOptions['watchlisthidebots'] = 0;
There is however no such preference for Special:RecentChanges yet, so you have to bookmark the URL. It will be part of future versions of MediaWiki though: Ensure consistency of how special pages [et al.] switches can be saved (tracking).