Fun Friday Resources

Today’s post is all about saving time, so we’ll keep it short.

But first, a rambling backstory.

Back in the early days when the Macintosh computer first appeared on the scene, PC-users would sneer and scoff at us Mac users because we “had to reach for the mouse” any time we needed to tell the computer to do anything. Graphical interface? Bah! Much more efficient, they sneered, to use the C:\ prompt line—your fingers never had to leave the keyboard.

And here we are today, where most Windows users of my acquaintance have no clue what a keyboard shortcut is, up to and including USING THE TAB KEY TO GO FROM FIELD TO FIELD in an online form. (It’s true, you can look it up.)

Here’s my peace offering to everyone today: keyboard shortcuts for every program you might ever need to use in design, at Shorcuts.design. Sure, you can go look every single one of these in its respective program, but why use a scalpel when you can get a fire hose, or some other equally mixed metaphor?

But wait, there’s more, at least if you’re a Mac user: Keyboard Maestro, a macro program for the MacOS. (Sorry Windows users, I don’t know enough to recommend a macro program for your platform.)

I’ve used Keyboard Maestro for years now, and I can honestly say that my productivity would be crippled without it. I’ve used it for simple expandable type—did you think I actually typed out Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy every time, or even just Lichtenbergianism?—and for far more complex processes.

Two examples: every 45 minutes, my computer will ask if I want to tweet. If I hit Enter, it brings up a spreadsheet with page numbers, a quote, some hashtags; randomly goes to one of the lines in the spreadsheet; copies the data into named clipboards; assembles those into a tweet; opens TweetBot, creates a new tweet, pastes in the text; then waits for me to give it the go-ahead.

Second example: yesterday I had to update the euphoriaburn.com website with a list of all the theme camps that have registered for placement, 38 in all. For each one, I was going to have to apply a Header 2 style to the camp, apply a Header 3 style to the “street address” I assigned to the camp, italicize the “genres” the camp fit into, select the address and genre lines and indent them.

My motto is that I have to do any repetitive task more than three times (and especially if I’m going to have to repeat the task in the future), I create a macro to do it for me. So: after putting the cursor in the camp name, I type my trigger (command-option-A), and it does all of those things automatically. It took less than two minutes to format the entire webpage. Next fall, when I have to format more than 100 theme camps, I will be glad I took the time to create the macro.

All this automation/shortcut stuff is worth the time to learn, because it’s going to improve your workflow. Do it!