Did you find yourself unable to complete a task within a given deadline?
Do you usually get nervous and unable to shorten the time for completing a given task?
Using keyboard shortcuts can increase your productivity, help you in multitasking, reduce repetitive strain and speed up the completion of a task. For example, when you want to copy text, you can highlight it and then press the Ctrl + C shortcut.
Using a copying shortcut will speed up your working process, because you’ll work only with a few motions on the keyboard instead of highlighting with the mouse, clicking on the right-click and then choosing “copy” from the given options.
Most people are still using this “long way” even they know that Ctrl + C is functioning great and can be used at any time. This is a common habit.
People hardly change the way they work and do not tend to get more productive. This habit is a part of their attitude. To do this, we need to change our mindset. A tech-savvy freshman who is familiar with most of the technologies and online tools can easily replace any older employee that has that attitude. Change is inevitable.
I guess you already know these, but not using them constantly:
- Ctrl + C
- Ctrl + X
- Ctrl + V
- Ctrl + Z
Being a digital marketer or wanting to become one, you will mostly work in a browser and other online tools. Thus, this requires you to be fast and handle multitasking.
You will find yourself switching the view from browser to desktop and reversing all the time. Doing this with a mouse will lose you more of your working hours.
Therefore, you will hate to learn and embrace all the required shortcuts to make your workflow.
There are two types of essential keyboard shortcuts that you will mostly need:
- In-Browser
- Desktop and Documents
Top in-browser keyword shortcuts
Most of the time, you will find yourself searching and scrolling through websites on the internet using your browser. The websites can be informative or online tools that you use for your day-to-day working tasks.
Time, speed and focus are crucial here and can boost or waste your productivity in a given moment.
In order to stay with a sharp mind and do multitasking here are the best browser shortcuts:
Alt + D – Marking the URL bar in order to type a google search or a website directly. Use your open tabs in the browser more effectively and don’t just open new tabs that can slow you down or crash the browser. Keep it clean.
Windows key + D – Show the desktop when you are working in the browser and want to switch between these screens easily. This shortcut is one of the most commonly used functions for a digital marketer.
Ctrl + T – Opens a new tab in the browser. Do not use this excessively.
Ctrl + W – close the current tab in the browser (or middle button of the mouse).
Ctrl + Shift + T – Reopens closed tab in the browser. This shortcut is a relief. When you close a tab unfortunately or in a rush, press this combo and you will be returned where you left.
Ctrl + F5 or Ctrl + Shift + R – Browser caching is one of the most common situations when publishing new changes to a website. This hard refresh of the tab.
Ctrl + Tab – moving backward and forward between tabs in the browser (similar to Alt + Tab for swiping between open programs and documents in Windows).
Alt + Arrows (Left and Right) – takes you backward and forward between actions. Statistics show that the “back button” is still the second most used navigation feature. With this trick you can save the time used for returning on the previous page with the pointer.
Ctrl + F – Find or search within the tab or in the Developer Tools by keyword.
F12 – Developer tools (for advanced users).
Top keyboard shortcuts for working with documents
You may find these useful while doing some administrative work or sorting some files.
Alt + Tab – this is one of the most useful shortcuts for switching between active and open files and programs.
Ctrl + Shift + N – creates new folder
F2 – edit a document name.
Ctrl + Left Mouse Click – selecting particular files at once.
Shift + Left Mouse Click – selecting a range of documents (instead of clicking them one by one).
Ctrl + A – select all files in a given folder.
Moving around with arrows and holding Ctrl to navigate faster between words.
Ctrl + Shift + Esc – open Task Manager, suitable when an app is stuck or starting to slow down the computing power.
Single-button keys (for browsers and documents)
Even when using the keyword shortcuts in the browser, you will still need to operate with some single keyword buttons that help to move around the content.
Scrolling with your mouse or mousepad can be very difficult for your arm and often takes too much time to get somewhere on the page.
Here the not-so-much used single keyword buttons that will help you with a single tap.
Home button – or Scroll to top. When you scroll down on a webpage and need to return to the beginning, if the website hasn’t implemented a “Scroll to Top” button, this shortcut does the job.
End button – Takes you to the bottom of the page, in case you want to find contact information or some important links in the website’s footer.
Page Up and Page Down – When the mouse scroll is too slow, you can use these two keyboard buttons.
PrtScn – Taking a screenshot from the current view in the browser.
[blockquote align=”none”] BONUS: Windows + . (the period punctuation mark) key, or else the Windows + ; (semi-colon) key opens the emoji keyboard. [/blockquote]
Wrap up
There are more keyboard shortcuts, but there is no need to know them all to improve your working process. Using these keyword combinations in given situations can reduce doing some actions from minutes to seconds.
Tasks that previously required multiple mouse clicks can now be done with a single simultaneous press of several keys. In the end, your muscles and fingers will also be grateful for this relief.