Taking a break from this blog’s regularly scheduled programming: let’s talk about productivity.
If you’re like me–and I’ll bet many of you are–using a computer is an essential part of your everyday life. Therefore, how productive you are largely depends on how well you can use a computer. There’s one extremely important productivity tool that’s probably rather close to you right now. Can you guess what it is? I’ll give you a hint…
I have many keys but open no locks,
I can be musical but never talk.
Letters and symbols line up in rows,
Press me to type, and your message flows.
What am I?
Of course, the answer is the incredible 104-key technological marvel that is sitting in front of you right now. The keyboard is an essential tool, and by not fully exploiting the potential productivity that it offers, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
Table of Contents
- Why You Should Learn To Type
- Why You Should Learn Hotkeys
- General Hotkeys
- Hotkeys for Windows
- Hotkeys for Navigating Text
- Hotkeys for Browsers
- Hotkeys for Excel
- Hotkeys for Macs
- In Conclusion
Why You Should Learn to Type
When I was a Junior in high school, I decided to take a typing class. I’d been rather fond of computers for many years and I could “hunt-and-peck” with the best of them. Learning how to type changed my life, specifically:
- I could more efficiently capture my stream of consciousness.
- I could code more quickly.
- I could finish assignments faster.
- I didn’t have to break my eye contact of the computer screen.
- I could focus better.
- I could communicate better with others.
While I was told that typing was an essential skill for job seekers as they entered the workforce, I hadn’t planned on a lot of these benefits. In retrospect, learning how to type was probably the most important skill in helping me become more efficient at using a computer, and thereby a more effective employee for the companies that I’ve worked for.
Why You Should Learn Hotkeys
Fast forward to the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college. I landed my first IT job with a school district in the Chicago suburbs. I was placed on a team that was tasked with updating thousands of computers. As I performed routine software updates, I began searching for quicker methods. This led me to discover hotkeys, and I soon developed a strong aversion to using the mouse.
As I write this article 20 years later, I can attest to this: learning how to type made me an effective employee and helped me get my foot in the door for the job market I’d enter as I finished my undergraduate degrees, BUT learning hotkeys made me exponentially more productive than my peers across the board.
Using hotkeys is the single most valuable productivity secret I can share. They save an immeasurable amount of time out of your life and requires no skill—other than simply knowing a hotkey exists. Remarkably, there are no big courses on hotkeys. Maybe this article can be the self-guided course that changes your life.
If you follow my advice in this article, you’ll start to hate using the mouse. I’d estimate that being able to type and use hotkeys simultaneously makes you about 20% more efficient at using a computer than anyone else could hope to be by simply learning how to type.
Generally speaking, all of these hotkeys below are listed in order of how often I estimate I use them (respective into each category.)
General Hotkeys
Start with these hotkeys. They’re usable in most locations and are a good introduction to using hotkeys. These hotkeys assume you’re using a PC, though many (if not all) of them can be used on a Mac by substituting the “Control” key for the “Command” key. However, I’ll include a Mac-Specific Hotkeys section at the bottom of this article.
- Ctrl+A – Select All.
- Ctrl+C – Copy
- Ctrl+V – Paste
- Ctrl+X – Cut.
- Ctrl+Z – Undo
- Ctrl+Y – Redo (i.e. – undo your last undo.)
- Ctrl+F – Open the “Find” window
- Ctrl+P – Print
- Ctrl+S – Save
- Ctrl+N – Open a new document / window / etc.
If you know these hotkeys–and most probably do–this will serve as a basis for more of the lesser known ones below.
Hotkeys for Windows
These are general hotkeys for using the Windows operating system.
- Windows Key (or Ctrl+Esc on keyboards that don’t have a Windows key) – This button opens your start menu, which most people know.
- What most people don’t know about this key is that once you’ve opened the start menu, you can instantly start typing the name of any program you are looking for.
- Alt+Tab – Switch between windows. If you hold down alt and keep hitting tab, you can go “deeper” into your stack of windows.
- Alt+Shift+Tab – The same as Alt+Tab (switch between windows)–but in reverse order. That is, from switching to your least-recently used window backwards.
- Alt+F4 – Close the current, active window.
- Win+D – Display Desktop Toggle. This is similar to Alt+Tab, but has more options for virtual desktops. I use Alt Tab WAY more (as it’s a lot faster). (I don’t use virtual desktops in Windows a lot yet. I know, I know. I probably should.)
- Win+Arrow Keys – Allows you to move your windows around your screen(s) in an organized manner. Keep the windows key depressed while playing with the arrow keys to learn more. (This works especially well on multiple displays.
- Tab – Advance to the next fields on forms / file name / etc.
- Shift+Tab – Return to the previous field on forms / file names / etc.
- Win+. – Pull up the emoji / gif menu. This allows you to type emojis in Windows. 😄⌨️
- Win+V – Open your Clipboard History. (Note that this little contextual clipboard history window also allows you to get to the emoji menu as well–it’s a tabbed interface.)
- Win+L – Lock your computer.
- Win+R – Opens the “Run” window. (This is especially useful to us nerds that want to quickly launch console commands.)
- Win+E – Open a File Explorer window.
- Alt+Enter – Open the properties window for the highlighted item.
- F2 – Rename the highlighted item.
- F5 – Refresh
- F11 – Toggle full screen.
- Shift+Windows+S – Screenshot that lets you select what you want to save via the snipping tool
- Win+Print Screen – Express screenshot that saves the entire screen (or screens) to a single screenshot in your default “gallery” folder.
- Win+Z – Choose between window snap layouts. (Useful for doing multiple things at the same time and managing screen real estate–especially when you don’t have multiple monitors to work with.)
- Ctrl+Shift+Esc – Open “Task Manager”–try this when one of the apps you’re running is bogging down the works. You may be able to avoid a reset! This is also a great way to diagnose what may be going wrong with your computer.
- Win + Shift + 1 through 9: Open a new instance of the app pinned to the taskbar at the position indicated by the corresponding number.
- Ctrl+Alt+Del – This is known as the “3 Finger Salute,” and today it opens security options. This is kind of a last resort. (This keystroke was designed to require one to use two hands to execute it–as a failsafe to make sure that it wasn’t hit accidentally.)
Hotkeys for Navigating Text
Try these in applications where you’re writing text (like Word, Notepad, or similar).
- Ctrl+Left – Skip the next word of the text.
- Ctrl+Right – Skip back a word within the text.
- Shift+Arrow Keys – Expand the current selection to include the next character (right arrow), previous character (left arrow), next row (down arrow), or previous row (up arrow).
- Ctrl+Shift+V – Paste UNFORMATTED Text. (Depending on the app, this may also match the existing formatting of the text in which you are pasting the string.)
- Ctrl+Alt+1, 2, 3… – Apply the corresponding heading style. Text styles are probably the most underutilized (and powerful) feature in programs like Microsoft Word, OneNote, and similar. Most people know the next 3 hotkeys and use those instead of these heading styles, which is really a misinformed way of using the software.
- Ctrl+B – Toggle the boldness of the selected text.
- Ctrl+U – Toggle underline under the selected text.
- Ctrl+I – Toggle italics of the selected text.
- Ctrl+D – Toggle strikethru (i.e. – cross-out) of the selected text.
- Ctrl+K – Associate the highlighted text with a hyperlink.
- Shift-Enter – Insert soft carriage return. (More specifically: pushing “enter” creates a new paragraph in word. Pushing shift-enter only creates a new row, which mostly has implications with respect to line spacing settings (and paragraph spacing settings) in your word processor.)
Hotkeys for Browsers
Try these in your web browsers. (Chrome, Edge, Mozilla, Brave, etc.)
- Ctrl+L – Move your cursor in the address bar and highlight the existing URL.
- Ctrl+Enter – If your cursor is in the address bar, this puts https://www.___.com around the text you’ve typed and goes to the URL. So, if you typed joesbucketlist in the address bar and hit Ctrl+Enter, it would take you to the homepage of this site..
- Ctrl+T – Open a new tab.
- Ctrl+F4 – Close the active tab.
- Ctrl+Shift+T – Reopen the last closed tab. (And this works more than once. For example, if you close three tabs and then hit Ctrl+Shift+T 3 times, it’ll re-open all 3 tabs.)
- Ctrl+N – Open a new browser window.
- Ctrl+Page Up – Move to the next tab.
- Ctrl+Page Down – Move to the previous tab.
- Ctrl+Shift+N – Open a new incognito window
- Ctrl+1 – Switch to the first tab
- Ctrl+2 – Switch to the second tab
- Ctrl+3 – Switch to the third tab
and so on until… - Ctrl+9 – Switch to the last tab.
- Ctrl+R – Refresh the active tab.
- Ctrl+Shift+Del – Open clear browsing data.
- F7 – Turn on (or off) caret browsing. This allows you to move around a webpage in a similar manner to
Hotkeys for Excel
You can become the “king of the spreadsheets” with these little hotkeys. Many of these are also QUITE useful in recording and writing macros:
- Control+Down – Go to the first blank cell of the column.
- Control+Up – Go to the previous blank cell of the column.
- Control+Right – Go to the first blank cell of the row.
- Control+Left – Go to the previous blank cell of the row.
- Ctrl+Page Up – Next spreadsheet in workbook.
- Ctrl+Page Down – Previous spreadsheet in workbook.
- F2 – Edit the highlighted cell.
- F4 – Absolute Addressing / Relative Addressing toggle. (This can be repeated in order to make the entire cell absolute, only the column absolute, only the row absolute, or to turn off relative addressing.)
Hotkeys for Macs
These are my favorite Mac hotkeys. Macs are a bit different, in my opinion, as the mouse is way better than in Windows, and actually designed around using a touchpad. I’m not going to include the obvious ones (Command+C = Copy, Command+V = Paste, etc), but rather the ones that I find which are super useful and that you may have missed.
- Command+Space – Open up Spotlight Search. (I often also use this as a quick calculator.)
- Command+Up – Go up a directory.
- Command+Down – Go down a directory.
- Command+Option+N – New Folder with Selection.
- Command+Q – Quit the Active Program.
- Command+W – Close the Active Window (Note how this is different from the previous one… it’s an important difference, especially in Mac OS!).
- Command+Shift+W – Close ALL windows.
- Command+Shift+3 – Screenshot the entire screen.
- Command+Shift+4 – Screenshot an area of the screen.
- Command+Control+Space – Emoji & Symbols viewer. (This is how you search for and type an emoji.)
- Command+Option+D – Show / Hide the dock.
- Command+Option+V – Paste and Merge Formatting.
- Command+Option+Esc – Force quit an app.
- Command+Option+Shift+V – Paste unformatted text (where supported)
- Command+Control+Q – Lock Screen.
- Command+Shift+Q – Log Out.
- Command+Shift+Option+Q – Log Out immediately.
In Conclusion
I’ll offer one more piece of parting advice before finishing up this article: Common advice (which I’m sure we’ve all heard) is not to cut corners when buying a mattress as you spend one third of your life living on it.
By extension, I’d make the same argument about keyboards. If you’re like me, you’re probably touching one for about a third of most of your day. For those that don’t have one, consider investing in a decent mechanical keyboard. (Rubber dome keyboards are crap.) Once you have a mechanical keyboard (my first mechanical keyboard was a buckling spring IBM Type M keyboard), it’ll change your life. Before you buy one, make sure to try out all of the mechanical mechanisms to see what you like the best. (I’m a heavy typer, so I like buckling spring keyboards and the Cherry blue mechanism.)
Let me know some of your favorite keyboard thoughts in the comments below!
