Taking Shortcuts Is a Good Thing

By Michael Choi

Consider this: We each live an average of 75 years, or about 657,000 hours. After the age of 10, we spend an average of 8 hours a day (or night) sleeping. That comes to 189,000 hours — or more than 21 years — in the sack. We spend another 2 hours a day eating, which works out to 47,450 hours — or 5 years, 5 months — at the table. We dedicate another hour a day to showering, drying, shaving, brushing, combing, and dressing before stepping out the door for a total of 27,375 hours — or more than 3 years — primping, plucking and preening. To top it off, between the ages of 22 and 65, we work an average of 40 hours a week, which comes out to about 82,560 hours — if we exclude vacations, holidays and sick days — or roughly 9 years, 5 months behind a desk, at the computer and in meetings.

Add it all up, and it comes to roughly 41 years — or more than half our lives — sleeping, eating, getting ready for work and working, which doesn't leave much time to mow the lawn, walk the dog, take the kids to soccer or play video games.

No wonder we're so frazzled!

The good news is that by taking a few shortcuts here and there, we can cut the time of mandatory tasks and increase our time available for beneficial pursuits (see "playing video games"). Best of all, you can apply these shortcuts now, just by spending less time with our little buddy known as the mouse and getting more acquainted with the computer keyboard.

If you're like most computer users, you probably hold the mouse to execute many commands as you click away. Yet in order to execute those commands, you navigate around the top menu bar just to locate a certain function that's buried inside of another scroll-over window or drop-down menu. Once you locate the function, you might notice an odd-looking symbol followed by a letter next to each command.

Did you ever wonder what these icons are? They're key commands, otherwise known as shortcut keys to carry out the same commands as your beloved mouse. So, instead of taking your hands off the keyboard to fumble with the mouse, you can hold down the corresponding function key while pressing the letter to activate the command.

For those of us who remember the dark days of DOS, key commands are nothing new. But to anyone born during the Reagan administration, key commands might seem as foreign as an 8-track tape (see Nixon administration). At first, shortcut keys require a little memorization, but once you become accustomed to using them, you can start taking advantage of their speed, reduce those labor hours and reserve your valuable time for more meaningful things in life.

To get us started, here are the top 10 most frequently used shortcut keys for both PCs and Macs. Shortcut keys generally use the Ctrl key on PC and Command key on Mac with a letter. Just memorizing and applying these 10 shortcut keys will increase your productivity dramatically.

Once we nail down these common commands, we can move on to using shortcut keys for Internet browsers. Here are the top 10 shortcuts for browsers.

Yes, shortcuts require a little memorization. They might also mean becoming less attached to your mouse. Most of all, they will give you more time to spend pursuing life's many delights. Which reminds me, did I walk the dog this morning?

Michael has over 9 years of experience as Graphic Design Specialist involved in everything from magazine advertisements, to web marketing campaigns, and brand identity development particularly for ExxonMobil. He was chosen as the logo winner for Vienna Tysons Chamber of Commerce for redesigning their brand identity. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. in Graphic Design and attended the Pratt Institute on scholarship in 1999 for Graphic and Creative Design.

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