7 Keyboard Shortcuts to Simplify Your Life

There is no shortage of web content with shortcuts to make life easier. The thing is that once you know them you just naturally assume that everyone else does. I spend a lot of time with staff going over their pipeline and the first thing I generally notice is how much time they take to complete a task when sitting at their computer. Now I can’t touch type, and I struggle with distractions so any shortcuts are my nirvana when it comes to actually starting something and actually finishing it. So here goes with my “go to” shortcuts that make life far easier…

1. Alt Tab - I am not a fan of the mouse…leaving the keyboard to touch the mouse is time lost…alt tab between applications, far quicker, especially if you are cutting and pasting whole text across documents - Ctrl A, Ctrl C, Alt tab, Ctrl V, simple as that.
2. Ctrl F - I spend a lot of time building Boolean search strings for candidates, when I get a hit I don’t have time to read a whole article to find the relevance. Ctrl F for what you are actually looking for, a quick reference to how many times the term appears then flick through them to quickly find.
3. Ctrl Z - to my point of not being able to touch type above…..fat fingers means I find myself deleting things i shouldn’t, Ctrl Z quickly undoes your mistakes…and a hack for the iPhone user - shake your iPhone/iPad for the same result.
4. Ctrl S - nothing worse than your computer crashing or freezing before you have saved your work….happens once and you become that person that becomes paranoid about saving your work every 5 minutes…..leave the keyboard, mouse to file/save…..no need, Ctrl S without breaking a beat to regularly save.
5. Ctrl + - Ok I am admitting my age here but the text is getting smaller and smaller….who wants to strain to see what’s on the page…Ctrl + for a bigger font.
6. ALT-Print Screen - Ever tried to explain a problem on your computer to IT support…..much easier to send them a screenshot.
7. Auto correct - great for those regularly used phrases and you can set up as many as you like. rg = Regards, thx = Thanks, tftf = thanks for the feedback.....and so on.....also very useful for those annoying repetitive fields you have to fill in on websites like email addresses, your postal address etc....

These are just a few of my favourites and the ones that I use on a daily basis to make work just that little bit simpler…

Now before I post this, Ctrl A, Ctrl +.

If you know of any other practical time-saving keyboard shortcuts, please share them here.