Like any learnable skill, it takes practice to figure out how they work. However, there’s an exponential benefit of learning your favorite applications shortcuts or setting up custom ones for yourself.
It is an investment when you choose to learn an application’s keyboard shortcuts. You will reach a point where you see a return on the time, energy, and effort you put in.
Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo are easy… but a good starting point if you’re not using them.
Print, Create a link, Select all, New Tab, New Window is a good step two.
David Sparks (MacSparky) has taught me so much in this area.
I first took his OmniFocus course and set up his identical keyboard shortcuts.
OmniFocus
Control + Option + Space = Capture
Command + L = select a link in browser
Control + Command + Option + O = Pull that link into OmniFocus
You may not be an OmniFocus user. But these 3 simple shortcuts changed the game for me. Being able to quickly pull links into my task manager without touching the trackpad or mouse allows me to move quickly and “put the bookmark in the book.”
Here’s what you can get from this…
Learn keyboard shortcuts.
They’re hard at first.
It’s slow at first.
But there’s a point where your speed puts you back in control of your digital world instead of the digital product controlling you.
I now keep an OmniOutliner document called “Learn Keyboard Shortcuts” that I can pull up quickly to “exercise” the ones I’ve learned and to capture new ones I want to learn.
What might be a good starting place for you?
