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Thanks and have a great weekend!
Tim
My favorite shortcut in Windows is Alt-Tab->Tab->Tab->etc: Move quickly between windows, and find lost windows
Sent from my mobile using FeedM8
In Firefox, using the middle (or scrollwheel) button to click on links opens them in a new tab.
(Entire post showed in Google Reader :)
I've recently souped up my keyboard with Autohotkeys and now have loads of shortcuts with my fave being typing out my addy in full by hitting the otherwise useless INSERT key.
http://www.autohotkey.com/
I really like the Ctrl F shortcut (find) in Firefox. Whenever i'm looking for a certain word or phrase I just hit the 'highlight all' button to quickly go through the text and find what i'm looking for.
M$ Button L - locks the station. Useful if you go out for 5 minutes and don't want anyone to change your status in Skype ;)
M$ Button D (as well as M) - minimizes all the applications
For Firefox: Ctrl Tab - changes pages in new window
- Quicksilver (free) : http://blacktree.com/projects/quicksilver.html . Here's quick video tutorial that some dude made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBvFUhTqKK4 .
- TextPander ($30) : http://www.smileonmymac.com/textexpander/
Both of them are easy to start using immediately, but expandable over time. Serious time savers!
Re: RSS, the entire post displayed fine.
My favourite is actually holding down the Ctrl and rolling your middle mouse roller.
What it does is it zooms in or out your window or increases or decreases your font size.
It works for almost all windows applications including firefox, IE, Word, Powerpoint etc.
Try it out!
Along with the power button, alt F4 is my favorite (close window).
the shortcuts...i use often...the powerlifting??? i'm not sure what to think about that. I'm going to cancel my home security system and see if Joe can just stand by my front door.
Sadly this wasn't supposed to be standard and in linux it doesn't work much so I have to learn using ctrl insert / shift insert instead.
ctrl f activates find. I use this a lot in firefox to search for words on websites.
Here's some nifty features if you have compiz in linux, this is for the people who know how to activate such nifty stuff...
alt shift uparrow for window selector, it arranges all windows so I can see everything at once and pick the window I want.
ctrl alt left/right to go to next/previous desktop.
alt click'n'drag to move a window (doesn't require compiz I think)
In FF:
* Alt D to get to the address bar
* Alt Home to go to your homepage (Y! Home Page junkie)
* Ctrl W to close a tab
* Ctrl F5 to do a full reload of a page (bypasses cache)
Windows General:
* windows key r (opens run) ... (changed a bit in vista but you can go back to the old school stuff if you want)
* after windows key r you can type in a drive letter to open a window for that drive (c:) you can type in a url and open a browser if you don't already have one open. You can type in an app name (notepad) etc etc
*ctrl esc works in place of the windows key if you're on a keyboard w/o the windows key.
** Always check your menus and help ( per app ) for a full list of whats avaliable. Search "keyboard shortcuts" .. A quick 5 minute read might shave 5 minutes a day off your computer time.
Ctrl Tab = Next tab
Ctrl pg up = Next tab (right -->)
Ctrl pg down = Previous tab (<-- left)
For those who don't know about the application ActiveWords and are interested in getting some shortcuts on steroids, than you might be interested. If allows you to create your own shortcuts for just about anything you can think of that can be done with the mouse. See http://www.activewords.com/.
Point of disclosure, I am a user of AW and not an employee. Also, the app is rock solid, which is important, because their support is non-existent for the rare times you might need it.
Thanks for the google reader suggestion. I've been using it for a few days now and it is wonderful. My browsing time has been reduced from 45 minutes to 5 minutes.
My favorite Obvious Shortcut is using "J" and "K" to move down or up one article in Google Reader. (Not that I don't read every word of your posts...)
Not mentioned so far E opens Windows Explorer.
Not quite on topic, but if you are not on Vista you need Colibri (colibri.leetspeak.org). Just trust me :)
As mentioned by others, if you are techie enough and on Windows you must have AutoHotKey. On my system Ctrl g from any application searches Google for the currently selected text - very useful. It also performs macro expansion for me which is very useful in email and instant messaging. For example: cych is replaced with "Dude, can you come here?", ut is replaced with "Are you there?", etc. It's handy in emails for expanding product names and other common acronyms.
Any AutoHotKey users have a script for open Messenger's "Send an instant message window"? I've been struggling with that for awhile.
Some additional info/correction to others. Alt F4 closes the active application, which is often the same as closing the active window. But in Word, for example, Ctrl F4 will close the active document while Alt F4 will close Word.
Ctrl Shift Esc opens the Task Manager.
Ctrl Tab and Ctrl Shift Tab moves forward/backward through tables.
Pause displays the System Properties
D minimizes all applications AND D again restores them all as they were, unless you open something in between.
In many apps Ctrl Home and Ctrl End takes you to the beginning or end of a document.
In a browser scrolls down one page.
I'm sure a million others I'm forgetting. I guess I should start a document :)
Also love CTRL clicklink which opens link in new Firefox tab.
And your whole post showed up via my reader. Have a great weekend!
Another oldie but goodie is F6 to get into the URL field, type the word and hit Ctrl Enter to add the www and the .com to the site you want.
When editing text, I like to use the Ctrl either left or right arrows to quickly navigate through to the front of each word. I also like Ctrl Backspace when I type a wrong word and need to just start that one over by deleting it. Ctrl Shift left or right arrow selects the word for copying and pasting purposes.
M$ key E gives a new window to browse the computer you are on.
One last one... Ctrl A to select all text in a field to paste into word for spell check so you don't look like an idiot to Tim's 20,000 readers :)
Wow, after seeing all this what a big nerd I am! Have a great weekend Tim and all!
E
Windows-L: Screen lock your computer
GET TO YOUR FAVORITE SITES FAST
When you create some favorite bookmarks in Firefox, you can then go up to Bookmarks>Organize Bookmarks and then select the ones you use a lot, right-click, select Properties and give it a Keyword (ideally just a letter or two).
From then on, all you have to do is go to the address bar, type in the code letter(s) and hit Enter and it takes you right to that site.
For example, I have "4h" as my keyword for this blog. All I type in is 4h and hit enter -- and I'm here.
Plus, searching your tags for shortcut will give you a handy list of all the shortcuts you have set up.
Ciao!
That said, most of these keyboard shortcuts are similar on a Mac. For example, in the Safari web browser (which comes with a Mac), to get to a domain name fast you just type in "google" and it goes ahead and adds the www and .com and stuff for you. No shortcut needed.
You also really want TextExpander. I can type the letter k, the letter r, and hit TAB, and it signs my email Kindest Regards, Raymond for me. I have tons of these little shortcuts, and according to the software, it saves me about 30 hours a year!
I saw this summary today:
http://www.weforum.org/en/knowledge/Events/2008...
This is at the end:
"With all that is happening, the way people relate to work has not changed. It is still a source of income, personal dignity, family stability and social peace. Work does not just consist of production, but the other issues are not as important to business. The new book, The 4-Hour Workweek, is an interesting perspective and very popular in business schools."
###
Wow, that is awesome! Davos is one of the few events I've wanted to attend for some time. Glad to see I'm partially there in spirit :) Thanks so much for the heads up, Sam!
All the best,
Tim
Enter only the name of the site (less the "www" and ".com") and then hit Ctrl Enter.
Doing so automatically adds the "http://www." and ".com" to site name. To my knowledge...this only works for .com domains.
Shift Rt Arrow - highlights text (for deletion--critical on laptop with no forward delete key)
Cmd Shift D - in Mail.app, sends (huge uptick in time saved!)
Opt Cmd spacebar - launch Quicksilver :-)
(Full post displaying in Bloglines.)
control-x: cut
control-c: copy
control-v: paste
These are much quicker than selecting the commands from the "file" menu with a mouse. These commands work in both word processors and the windows file manager.
I'm a tab-addict, often having 20 or 30 tabs open at a time when I'm doing research or a marathon browsing session, so it's a useful feature.
Keep up the great work Tim!!
Ascommunicatrix alluded to it is THE single tool that allows you to do more in less time without even thinking about it by giving you adaptive keyboard commands (it learns your habits) to launch apps, move files, email people, and much much more. You'll hardly touch your mouse when you use it.
It's an app thats hard to describe but once you start using it and you get used to it, it's very difficult to be without it. You just have to try it and you'll understand.
Remember, it's Mac only, and there isn't anything comparable on windows.
I think windows has a similar clone.
BTW, I've read that bench presses are bad for you because you are resting on your back. What are your thoughts? especially since you do sports that require a strong back: MMA, motorcycles?
Cheers,
Alan
###
Good call. I guess I assumed that you need to press Shift to display the "3" as a "#" but it isn't clear. Thanks!
Tim
For me that would be.... calculating.... 928 pounds.
Yeah, I could do that. Sure. No problem.
Remarkable athletic achievement!
Alt Space C closes the current window, I find this easier to do that alt f4 because the keys are grouped close together
In Windows Explorer going through files or folders, instead of visually scanning the list to find a folder to click on you can just type the first couple letters of the folder name to hop right to it.
As a geek I use Windows R a lot to open the 'Run' dialog where I'll then type stuff like 'cmd', 'notepad', 'msconfig', 'services.msc', 'compmgmt.msc'
But what's really great is the Actions palette, which let's you set up a whole series of functions that your computer will automatically run on an image, or a batch of images, and you can choose which keyboard shortcut to assign it to. Now that's automation!
For Gmail, there is a Firefox extension called Better Gmail that provides a ton of additional keyboard shortcuts on top of the ones that are already in Gmail. It's a must!
Here's something a bit more informed on browser security than you seem to be: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=915
Either way, what's the point of being so proud of learning windows shortcuts and then treating the browser as if it weren't a logical extension of that? Stick with IE.
"(Hint: just type in the name of a company or person — no 'www' or '.com' — and hit enter to find their website, if it exists)"
Well, that way initiates a search, which can be slow for uncommon URLs. You can force Firefox to bracket "www." and ".com" around a known domain by typing the domain in the address bar followed by Ctrl | Enter. So typing "fourhourworkweek" followed by Ctrl | Enter becomes "www.fourhourworkweek.com"
Following the domain name with Shift | Ctrl | Enter appends ".org" instead of ".com". Shift | Alt | Enter appends ".net".
Ctrl | T opens a new tab in Firefox (though you may have to change a setting in Tools | Options | Tabs); Ctrl | W closes the current tab. Ctrl | Page Up and Ctrl | Page Down shifts the current focus to the tab immediately right or left, respectively.
Now for a real Firefox Ninja tip -- keyword bookmarks:
If you right click a bookmark and open its Properties, note the "Keyword" field. You can put the keyword of your choice in this field, and you can then use this keyword in the address bar instead of a URL. I generally use 2-character mnemonics: "4h" for fourhourworkweek.com, "gm" for Gmail, "gr" for Google Reader, "lh" for Lifehacker, etc. So any frequently visited site is a couple of keystrokes away: Ctrl | L for the address bar, followed by the 2-character keyword bookmark, then "Enter: the whole sequence takes about 1 second once it's routine.
Sorry, I missed your post, and didn't realize you suggested the keyword bookmark as well. We both use 4h for this site!
For the rest of the iceberg:
Quicksilver (for Mac): http://blacktree.com/projects/quicksilver.html
I don't use a PC (ahhemmm) but I hear that there is a Quicksilver-like product called "Launchy" for the PC.
Once you use a product like these, you won't believe you wasted so much time with mere keyboard shortcuts!
Jose
For example, on the "Not-to-do list: 9 habits...", one of the paragraph reads:
The answer to overwhelm is not spinning more plates—doing more—it’s defining the few things that can really fundamentally change your business and life.
A lot of these †are scattered around, and although I can make sense of it, it is quite distracting. Perhaps someone in Bangalore or Manila can fix this?
Keep up the good work, you have changed my perspective forever. I owe you big time.
Many thanks, Daniele
###
Hi Daniele,
Thanks for this reminder. I know about this, as I'm using a Mac these days, and this error drives me nuts. I am completely unsure of why this is happening, as the " and so on (perhaps that just displayed incorrectly? Should be a quotation mark) appeared perfectly initially.
I'll check it out again. Anyone out there have ideas on how to fix the source of this, not just go in manually and change the odd substitutions?
Thanks!
Tim
This one app bridges the gap between the Ferrisy 'magic auto-reply' and having to write custom-crafted emails. Many communications for me are similar,but with a few mods - so using TextExpander shortcuts give you a tool-kit of frequently used text elements to build a quick email.
Some types of communications are better when crushed down to 5 sentences, but lots aren't (i.e. 'tell me about your products' or 'tell me about your band'). This tool lets you provide lots of content in your messages without the slog of typing it all.
Second minor tip on OS X - almost nobody I know enables multi-finger dragging on their trackpad - it's awesome! You can scroll down web-pages, or 'pan' left to right by putting two fingers down instead of one. This trackpad feature is so handy I loathe using a mouse now.
- Karl
Tip: include the word of a site you want to search along with your keywords in your google queries - that way, you can skip going to the site in question to start your search. You 'focus' the search by including the domain.
Example: If you want to search,say, Craigslist listings for a particular product you could go to Craigslist and do a search as usual. OR, you could just enter a Google search for "craigslist gretch guitar" and you'll get the same results in a single step. The results are better in fact because the search is across multiple craigslist sites.
Same logic applies to Ebay, Flickr, etc. Very handy.
If only they required techies to take advanced writing and journalism, we might all be "techies".
Great post!
regards,
Part rest of us, part Techie
Do I remember a comment in your book about Vertical Systems International? (aka VSI | Dave West).
Please ignore this comment if I am mistaken.
If I am correct, I just found it coincidental that I discovered both your book and VSI in the same week... VSI/Dave lives 3 doors down from me. Dave died suddenly of a heart attack last week. Condolences to anyone who knew him.
Tanya
You can get a 60-day free trial to the program, which can launch websites, insert replacement text (including entire letters) pull up applications, browse to folders and open documents. There's even a handy calculator that makes an approximation of how much you've saved based on your use of keywords. The license lets you install it on every PC you own, and there's even a handwriting tool for use with tablet PCs.
I'm just a customer, but as you can tell, I'm a convert, too.
Regards
Matt
Thunderbird (Firefox's email client cousin) has a calendar component available called Lightning available at:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/
Add to this a plugin to download and upload your Google Calendar data (so any updates done via the web go to your local calendar and vice versa) and you can now use your Google calendar offline (you will need to connect periodically to synchronize it of course). Provider for Google Calendar:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/ad...
A tutorial on setting this up is available here:
http://bfish.xaedalus.net/?p=239
And you can of course include other calendars that are shared with you, thus you can see your calendar and coworkers, online and offline!
Individual keyboard shortcuts are great ways to save time. You can also go one step more and string together sets of keyboard shortcuts to do entire routines like sending a message without ever touching the mouse.
I've pulled together a set of routines for doing things like sending messages and creating appointments or tasks, along with a large collection of individual Outlook keyboard shortcuts at: http://www.living-with-outlook.com/keyboard-sho...
--Bill
Here is my list of favorite shortcut keys:
alt-tab: switch between open applications
shift-alt-tab: switch in reverse order
ctrl-tab in navigator: switch between tabs
windows r: open run box
windows m: show desktop
Enjoy ;-)
I have read only your first chapter (and I am Dutch by the way), and one of my first assignments is to contact you (being part of celebitry in the meantime with 99% chance of little social contact with normal people like me), as I thought I could read all the other chapters, but why should I if instead you and I can meet (during some sailing or other non-working related activity) and share your views with mine - as this will further enrich your life, as it probably does mine?
Wim Gommeren - Zaandam - Netherlands (Office work, lot's of travelling but good paid)
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for writing The 4-Hour Workweek. I can't thank you enough for it.
The only thing I implemented so far is the email autoresponder. That was the most liberating feeling I experienced in years. That is, after I got over the hard part of forcing myself not to check email.
I’m reading your book for the second time and I've decided to do an experiment: follow your advice in the book word for word. I figure the worst thing that could happen to me won't be any worse than what I’ve already experienced so I really don't have anything to lose. I plan on logging my escapades on a website. I’ll post the reactions, results, etc. to everything I implement or try.
I graduated from Columbia University--in New York City--in May with a degree in philosophy (focus on Tibetan Buddhism) and currently I work in digital media production for a prestigious TV channel. The exposure's been great but after a month, I conquered the learning curve and they can't offer me anything more advanced at this time.
Not only am I extremely bored and find my job utterly meaningless, but I absolutely can't stand the 9-5 slavestyle (I call it slavestyle because it's not my idea of a lifestyle). I’m going bonkers after 7 years of having had relative control over my schedule while being in school. Working at the TV channel 9-5 has driven me to the brink of suicide (well, almost).
Objectively, for a 9-5 life, I have the creme de la creme of jobs given the industry and department. I sometimes wish that I could just be happy being a slave in the system like everyone else. But, I haven't been successful in conforming myself so I finally decided to face my fears and make another major life change.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to visit every country and territory in the world (including outer space) so that's what I’ll do: trip around the world and fly into outer space on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic--or go up with the Russians or one way or another, experience outer space. At the moment, my plans consist of getting rid of as many material possessions as possible, storing the rest in a few bins in my brother's basement, living in airport business lounges (since my AMEX gives me access) when I’m broke and need a roof and food, creating a sufficient remote cash flow to finance my dream life (how exactly I’ll do that, I have no clue), and doing all the other things I’ve always wanted to do. That’ll include picking up more languages, continuing to train for amateur boxing competitions (with the goal of turning pro), stunt flying (I got my pilot’s license when I was 18), skydiving, and enjoying life, etc. I’m giving myself 3 months to hit the road.
To people not like me, this sounds crazy (“What the #&%^$#! You’re throwing away your glamorous job at XYZ channel!????!!!???”) but I’m a crazy person and this has me more psyched than anything since graduating. Or in years and years, for that matter. It’s an adventure almost on par with escaping the Amish.
In your book, you occasionally mention doing case studies on people and mentoring people. Would you mentor me in this adventure?
I’d be forever grateful and happily split whatever profit I make from it. (There’s GOTTA be a way to generate cash flow from this adventure but I have the absolute worst karma in history when it comes to money so maybe you could steer me in the right direction?) In addition, I’ll introduce you to the inside life of the Amish and even teach you the Amish language if you’d like. I know you can experience basically whatever you want in the world but I doubt you’ve experienced Amish culture from the inside.
I escaped when I was 15. I’m the oldest of 11, a female and from a small community. It was no easy thing to orchestrate a successful departure, one that I planned for over 4 years from the time I was 11. Where I’m at currently is not where I want to be. I didn’t leave the Amish and bust my butt to get an Ivy League education and experience what little of the world I have experienced just to end up stuck and miserable in another robotic Fritz Langian Metropolistic system. I’ve had and have a wonderful life by the average American’s standards--experiencing things that make even my financially wealthy friends envious--but it’s still not satisfactory. I want to truly live. I want to be free.
Here’s my contact info:
[removed]
If you’re not interested in mentoring me, would you be willing to recommend me to someone else?
I would very much welcome any feedback, advice or suggestions you have regarding my leap into the unknown.
Thank your for your consideration and again, thanks a million for writing this book. It’s good to know that I’m not the only insane sane person out there.
Sincerely,
Torah
###
Hi Torah,
I unfortunately don't do any mentoring or coaching at the moment due to sheer volume, but I am interested in the Amish. To be continued...
Thanks so much for sharing,
Tim
With a Mac you can do apple tab to switch within programs, BUT you can also do apple ` which switches between windows of the same program.
This can save a ton of time with multiple windows of multiple programs open.
I think Quicksilver is an amazing time saver for Mac system.
http://www.blacktree.com/
If you want to go beyond shortcuts to specific productivity issues you might want a technology coach.
Seth Godin mentioned this in his blog. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01...
- opens links in a new tab
- closes tab / windows
also for they keyboard: start m to go to the desktop
Heres something that makes your MAC run faster. I did this while i was getting some tutoring from a mac Genius. Go to utilities and then to go to disk utility and then hit verify permission. This basically takes 2 mins and is the equivalent of defragmenting on your apple.
Jose
Re: weird characters showing up. I assume you're using a different program to write up drafts of your posts, and then copy/pasting? I've had this happen before when a word processing program uses "fancier" characters (such as opening/closing quotes instead of the plain ol' tick marks, or proper "em" dashes, etc). You can still display those on your site, but they have to be replaced with special little codes.
From a great little article at A List Apart:
"Don’t ever trust the 8-bit representations to be correct, because they almost certainly won’t be. The biggest problem is that many web browsers assume that 8-bit characters refer to the local character system, translating your curly quotes or dashes into Greek or accented Latin characters on other platforms."
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/emen/ (scroll down to "Newspapers of (broken) record")
For those of you without a middle button, you can use ctrl-click to open a new tab in firefox. (I think that works without an extension, though I always have tab mix plus installed - it comes with an insane amount of customization if you like that sort of thing).
Thanks for the tip on ctrl-shift-t, I am shortcut weenie, and that was the only shortcut given here that I don't use. Very nice.
My favorite shortcut in Word is the F4 key. It repeats your last action - whether as simple as applying text formatting, cutting text, or implementing a series of actions like selecting table rows, changing font size, color, adding borders - the one F4 stroke applies the whole series of actions.
Great post and comments!
Alt the left and right cursor keys works well for going forward and back to webpages in FF.
it looks like shift plus rolling the mouse will does the same thing.
thanks for the tips everyone.
In Firefox, when you create a bookmark, you can enter a keyword for easy access. For example, when you bookmark http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog you can set its keyword to be 'tim'. Next time you use Ctrl L to get to the location bar you can just type 'tim' and the browser will load the Four Hour Work Week blog.
The really lesser known incarnation of this is in IE. You can add the site to your favorites, which will give it a name based on the title of the page, then rename the favorite to be 'tim'. Next time you type tim in the location bar, IE will look first in your favorites for a bookmark named tim and load it if found.
Disclaimer: I am not associated with this product or company, other than having purchased it and sent some emails back and forth with the owner (I'm also a programmer, so we talked about programming).
as i want to ask you as a questions regarding the shortcuts key ab- out the computer for the general purpose only which i can't use my hands to my mouse respectively....................????
I have a request from u to sent lots of useful shortcut in my email add, please.