In the latest issue of The Peachtree Insider, the tip of the month addresses keyboard shortcuts: a way to keep your hands on the keyboard rather than slowing down to move to the mouse for a couple of clicks just to go back to the keyboard. If you are unfamiliar with reasons why you might want to leave your mouse alone, read this.
While the short list included is a fine start, it hardly scratches the surface on ways you can keep your productivity up by keeping your fingers on the keyboard. Going beyond mere keyboard shortcuts, other tools are available to help with text substitution. Text substitution is a system in which a user creates a hotstring (specific characters) that when typed are automatically replaced with a longer string of text. For example, rather than typing the entire name of our company, I can simply type A-S-L to get Acuity Solutions, LLC.
I recommend Texter from the folks at Lifehacker.com which works across all Windows applications so you can use it in Peachtree, Word, Excel, Outlook…you get the idea. Texter allow users to include date and time variables in text replacement and punctuation can be used in hotstrings. By the way, it’s free.
If you’re using text substitution, let us know how it works for you. We also want to hear any others ways you avoid the mouse.
There are obvious distractions we choose to participate it: Minesweeper, YouTube, and so forth. While you may lose a few minutes of each day to these trappings, for the most part, it is done in the conscience part of your mind: you now what your are doing. I am not going to argue we shouldn’t let these distractions into our lives; we all need a respite now and then.
However, there are other distractions. Yes, these distractions are more dangerous in part because you may lose more than a few minutes (likely more than a few hours or days). Rather, though, they are most dangerous because they are camouflaged; we don’t know they are distractions because we are convinced we are effectively solving a problem.
There are several, distinctly personal reasons we might pursue these distractions (maybe it is more fun, maybe it is the path of least resistance) but that is something best discussed with our personal Dr. Melfis. When embarking on a new project, what we can do is make absolute consideration for what we are about to do and why we are about to do it. In its simplest form, this is look-before-you-leap planning. Truly, it is look-before-you-leap-because-you-may-invest-a-lot-of -time-and-money-and-end-up-right-where-you-started-or-worse.
If you have customer service issues, consider multiple angles: improve employee morale, adjust policies to empower employees to respond directly to their customers, modify delivery procedures, adjust return policies. Take a deeper look. You may have a customer that cannot be satisfied. If that is the case, should you undertake an entire project or make one phone call to the customer to say thank you and good-bye?
I know I give too many details when I talk. I assume the same is true when I write.
I am trying to get over it but it isn’t going to happen right away.
I first read about life hacking in Time Magazine. The goal makes sense to me: I like the idea, so I follow some of the blogs it mentions and after a some time, I settled on 43 Folders which directed me to Rands In Repose: Ninety Days in which Rands assigns some interesting tasks for the first ninety days of your new job, not because it is a new job, but because you are working with a new team.
We’re not all about to start a new job. However, by beginning new projects, most of us are working with a new team: customer, vendor, strategic business partner, members of another department or division. While your next project may take ninety days, the team isn’t going to have ninety days to assimilate, but by keeping the ideas Rands has outlined in mind: get to know whom you are working with, you are giving the entire team a leg up.
While you’re making the effort for the sake of the team and your project, get real and don’t try to fudge your way through any of this. To borrow a final piece of advice from Rands about this process, “the less you trust your instincts, the more you’ll learn.”
In the latest issue of The Peachtree Insider, the tip of the month addresses keyboard shortcuts: a way to keep your hands on the keyboard rather than slowing down to move to the mouse for a couple of clicks just to go back to the keyboard. If you are unfamiliar with reasons why you might want to leave your mouse alone, read this.
