Keyboard Shortcuts Can Increase Your Productivity

I always appreciate it when my readers offer their own tips on productive and leadership issues. Today, I want to share this thoughtful post from my friend Stephen Williams who is the General Manager of WMUK, the NPR public radio station in Kalamazoo, Michigan:

Dave, I did have a tip that I’ve found helpful in terms of productivity. Feel free to use it in your recommendations, if you think it merits inclusion. My tip involves using keyboard shortcuts. I’ve noticed that I spent a lot of time opening folders and applications, printing files and other mundane tasks. I’ve found that keyboard shortcuts can be helpful in simplifying a lot of this, but for traditional keyboards those shortcuts are already claimed by an existing program … or Windows itself.

My solution is has been to buy a wireless gaming keyboard, that has a separate row of hotkeys that can execute any task you program it to — at the push of a button. So no need to worry about keyboard shortcut conflicts with existing programs. I’ve been using the Logitech G613 wireless mechanical gaming keyboard, and it comes with a great utility called G-Hub, that manages how these hotkeys work. It’s intended for people who are seriously into video games, but I’ve found it can vastly improve workflow productivity in non-gaming settings (I actually don’t use it for any gaming at all).

G-Hub allows you to use the G613 keyboard to basically create a macros that can perform any task you want to create. It does this by allowing you to record keystrokes and mouse clicks, then save them as a macro. You can then assign that macro to one of six independent keys on the left side of the keyboard. So for example, if you use a particular template in Word often, you can create a macro that will instantly open Word and load the template at a keypress.

Thanks for your great suggestion, Stephen.

Let’s add keyboard shortcuts to my list of productivity tricks and tips. You can find many more great ideas in my online course PATHWAY TO PRODUCTIVITY AND TIME MANAGEMENT. You will find lots of great ideas to help you feel better about your work. Find out more info HERE.

Originally published at http://daveedwardsmedia.com on November 22, 2021.