I need to expand on how to minimize the amount of time it takes someone to get the computer to do the task(s) he or she desires.
First and foremost, to significantly decrease the amount of time it takes for you to interact with your computer, learn quick keys and make a habit of forcing yourself to use them. If you just read them and then try them once but never use them obviously you’re getting no benefit. The misleading thing about quick keys is that the first several times you use them, it actually takes longer. I believe many people stop there and conclude that the mouse is better. What they’re not aware of is the speed with which one can accomplish the task once the quick key becomes ingrained into the brain the same way pressing the space bar or the letter “b” is for people who can touch type. You don’t think about the letter “b” and where it is and then press the key. You know what the next character is and then..it just happens. This is how quick and easy it can be for you to, for example, open an excel file with information you look at frequently once you put a little effort in up front. Trust me, its totally worth it.
I would say the best place to start learning great quick keys is to press the Alt key in any application and you’ll see the file menu at the top display quick keys by underlining the letter. For example, generally Alt + F opens the file menu and there are further keys from there. In excel, I’m often creating AutoFilters. Instead of doing it the slow way (clicking Data, then Filter, then AutoFilter), I’ve learned to press Alt + D, then F, then F. Boom its done in 80% less time and doesn’t require me to take my hands off the keyboard.
The 2nd place to go to is this great post. Look for actions that you take frequently on the list and pick a few to try to force yourself to do instead of using the mouse. Only pick a few at a time until you’re satisfied you’ve got them memorized. Then pick more and repeat again and again. I don’t know a lot of the previously linked keyboard shortcuts. However, I know most, if not all, of the ones that are most relevant to my computer usage. Also, I do have the information in that website plus a little more a few keys away =) One quick key that I would add that I only recently discovered that has made editing text much easier is control left/right to jump to previous/next word near current cursor position. I combine that with shift often to quickly select what I want to select.
Executor and Launchy are also great ways to make little tasks like opening a program, file, or folder quick and easy. I’m currently using Executor. However, it seems to respond somewhat slow, so I’m going to try Launchy again. I’ve used it before, but preferred my homebrewed hotkeys with AutoHotKey (discussed later). I now use Executor every once in a while to grab files or run programs I don’t normally use, so I’ll give Launchy another shot.
More later on AutoHotKey, Google Reader, and Evernote.
February 9th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Don’t forget about mouse gestures. I love being to easily navigate multiple tabs of webpages, and open/close tabs with just my mouse hand. It’s one of the few reasons I still stick with Opera. Firefox does have a mouse gestures plugin you can get, but I just don’t like its implementation as well.
But yeah, for doing real work a good vocabulary of keyboard shortcuts makes things much faster and smoother.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:43 am
I personally don’t like mouse gestures. I try to minimize my mouse usage because it hurts my hand and, generally in the long run, I think its not the most efficient way to interact with the computer. All those things you listed can be done with keyboard shortcuts. With AutoHotKey, you can even set it up to be done with one hand on the keyboard. However, if your hand is already on the mouse all the time while browsing and you don’t get pain from using the mouse a lot, then I can see how it would be more efficient to just use a mouse gesture.