Never underestimate the power of hotkeys

Over the years I have worked with many junior artists, most of whom have an understandingly rudimentary command of their software tools. Juniors are slow. When I’m buddied up with a junior one of the first things I watch for is hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts. When I see a crew member who favors menu dropdowns it’s time for a long, sit-down, Dad talk.

The most common remark I hear when I suggest using hotkeys instead of menus is “So what, it takes two seconds longer”

I have to agree that, if during your work day, you used a menu drop down once, that one second per day would only make an artist a few minutes per year slower than those who use hotkeys. The problem is that we may make tool selections thousands of times per day. Let’s say, conservatively that each time we choose to use a menu instead of a keyboard shortcut, we lose one second. Let’s imagine we do this, again conservatively, 500 times per day. We are losing roughly 8 minutes per day. Now, let’s pretend we’re in a medium sized studio where there are 200 crew using menus instead of hot keys. That’s roughly 26 hours, or more than three full time days of pay PER DAY. that’s equivalent to three more full time staff for the whole year.

And that’s just hotkeys.  

Imagine if every crew member was always improving their technique to be faster and more efficient. Imagine if individual efficiency were the default attitude of production artists and TDs. Just imagine how much more we could get done without resorting to insane overtime.

Be a great team member. Learn your hotkeys!