I was working with a colleague recently, helping him through a process that was unfamiliar with a tool he had not really used. What we were doing is less important than the conversation.
“Paste the item three times.” I’ll admit it, I was bored
He moved his mouse, clicked, went to the menu, clicked a couple of times in the menu to paste, then clicked in the new place.
“Did you know you could use control + V to paste things?” I didn’t want to sit there all afternoon.
“I don’t like to use my keyboard.”
I don’t think he saw me roll my eyes, but I now have a really good idea about why overall productivity level is so low. “Why wouldn’t you want to use the shortcut?” I really did want to know.
He shrugged. “It takes too much effort to learn.”
I didn’t point out to him that Paste has had the same shortcut since Windows 3.1. But as I sat there waiting for him to waste both of our time, I started thinking about shortcuts.
Shortcuts are not the same thing as cutting corners. Shortcuts are getting to your destination faster. Cutting corners is to do things faster, but possibly in an unsafe manner.
I routinely use shortcuts in my work. I don’t like to remove my fingers from the keyboard because it takes more time to use the mouse. I employ a text expanding program so that things I type many times can be output with a couple of key presses.
I routinely use shortcuts in my housework. I rely on appliances to do a lot of the work for me. I clean in a manner that is efficient and direct, and allow my cleaning agents to soften/remove/otherwise do as much of the cleaning for me.
I routinely use shortcuts in my commute, taking a not-so-obvious route that routinely beats the time it takes traffic on the highway.
In fact, I am always on the lookout for more shortcuts. Shortcuts save me time and effort – time and energy I can then apply to other things.
As a friend told me, how much energy I expend on a bike ride up a hill limits the amount of energy I can spend on other hills – or tackle them at all.
So I ask you: do you use shortcuts? If you don’t, why? Is that a strong enough reason to offset the time and energy you would save?
Photo by Juan Gomez on Unsplash
