We love being productive! And we look for big, honkin’ ways to be more productive. Things like forming habits through triggers, or setting up a new email system. We like big changes that we think will have a big effects. But as my episode on 30 minutes a day points out, there are small behaviors that add up to the greatest gains of all. And the smallest behavior for the greatest gain? It’s at your fingertips. Literally: your keyboard.
Invest in a Touch-Typing Class
You’ve spent thousands of dollars to learn important professional skills. You went to college. You indebted yourself for life, all to become a Master of Stuff That Matters. But once you’re in the “real world,” the gatekeeper of our hyper-technological society rears its ugly, snake-encrusted head: your computer. Everything gets done, 24/7, through your keyboard.
Enroll in a touch-typing class. Find one online. Get a book and practice. It’s a few weeks’ of work that pays for itself for the rest of your life. Faster typing means faster anything-that-requires-typing. And these days, “anything” is the new “everything.” All the time. So a 10% increase in typing speed will give you a 10% increase in productivity across the board.
If it’s worth going into debt to learn about mid–13th-century Russian Popes (Were there any mid–13th-century Russian Popes? I went to an engineering school), it’s worth going into debt to make everything better for the rest of your life.
Type Less
You can type faster with touch typing. And you can also just type less.
Letters were an artform in Renaissance Europe. Before typing, before the printing press, you had a box on your end table. A beautiful, hand-carved box, closed with a tiny clasp. You would open the clasp, ever-so-gently, and demons would pour out of the box, take over your soul, and wreak havoc on this plane of existence. So please, don’t open that box.
Try a mechanical keyboard. You’ll never go back to a sub-par, cheap-plastic keyboard again.
The other box on your end table, however, contained quill pens and parchment paper. Both of these were expensive, difficult to manufacture, and incredibly fragile. So it’s no wonder that Shakespeare said “brevity is the soul of wit” — he wanted to keep costs as low as possible! If he’d been a better wordsmith, he would have just written “keep it short,” which was half as long.
Treat your laptop like a quill and parchment paper. Every word costs money. Or at least, it costs time. The less you write, the less it costs.
Keep your e-mails and texts to three sentences. When a message gets longer, stop and trim. If you can’t trim, pick up the phone and call. Even if you get voicemail, you can leave a voicemail far faster than you can type.
You can find the three-sentence guideline, and a link to the website explaining it, at http://ift.tt/2j8dpn8. Use their text as your e-mail signature, and soon the entire world will be concise, pithy, and brief.
Optimize Your Digital Workspace
Now, you’re typing less, faster. And now … smartphones! I just love typing on smartphones. No, I don’t. I really, really hate typing on smartphones phone. I’ve tried all the keyboards and even the best ones—Swiftkey and Nintype from the iPhone store—are still awkward enough that typing speed is a fraction of what it is on a real keyboard. That’s not even including typos. Or autocorrect. How convenient. Autocorrect actually works about 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, it turns my correctly spelled words into other words that I did not type. “Please pass the jam” becomes “I worship Satan!” with a cute little upside down pentagram emoji. I do not worship Satan. And I don’t even know why an upside down pentagram emoji exists. And it doesn’t matter because all I want is the jam!
So don’t type on your phone or tablet. Just, stop it. If you must use it, use a text expander as much as possible. When it’s a phone environment, you want to type as few characters as humanly possible to get your result.
Use Pre-Written Replies
Some phones also have pre-written reply messages that you can send when you reject an incoming call. Customize those! By default, they “I’m in a meeting, Call me back later” or “I’m driving. Can’t talk now.” Have those messages convey useful information and increase your social status, all at once. “I’m meeting with Justin Bieber. Have your people call my people later” or “My chauffeur is driving while I place stock trades to arbitrage the recent news out of Washington. Can’t talk now.” With a single tap, you’ll be the envy of all your friends.
To learn more about text expanders across all your devices, check out the Get-it-Done Guy episode on smartphone text expansion.
Buy a Good Keyboard
Now that you’ve sworn off smartphone typing, you’re back to your desk. And you’re touch typing. You can use the keyboard that came with your computer, but that was made by Silicon Valley, where the only real concern was how to charge you top dollar while selling you utter dreck. You want a real mechanical keyboard that gives you both audible and tactile feedback. The right keyboard can increase your typing speed tremendously. Mine is a Das Keyboard 4 Professional with Cherry MX Brown switches.
Try a mechanical keyboard. You’ll never go back to a sub-par, cheap-plastic keyboard again. I gave one to Intern MG and, three months later, he was living in a castle in the Netherlands. Coincidence? I think not.
And what’s also not a coincidence is that you’ll gain hours or days a year of productivity just by optimizing your typing. Learn to touch type. Type less. Don’t type on your smartphone, and use a text expander if you must. And above all, buy a good keyboard! After all, if you were going to perform open heart surgery, you wouldn’t use a K-mart scalpel, you’d use … never mind. Bad metaphor. Typing. It’s in everything you do. Speed up your fingers and you’ll be amazed at what happens next.
This is Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. I run programs to help people develop the kick-ass business skills they need to create an extraordinary life. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins.com.
Work Less, Do More, and have a Great Life!
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