Increasing business productivity is a great way to streamline your workflow as well as save money and save time. One often-overlooked way to boost productivity is by utilising keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts help you become more productive by taking familiar commands and putting them at your fingertips. Microsoft designed hundreds of keyboard shortcuts into the Windows Operating System to help speed up your everyday business life. Keyboard shortcuts are more than just shortcuts; they open the doors to better productivity.
In this blog, we'll explore how to boost your productivity with keyboard shortcuts, covering everything from basic commands to advanced keyboard combinations. This will help you work more quickly and accurately.
Importance of Keyboard Shortcuts for Businesses:
Using keyboard shortcuts within your business can help save so much time in your day. The more you use these shortcuts, the more you’ll start to see yourself having more time on your hands for other tasks. They also play a crucial role in boosting your overall efficiency, making sure you work smarter, not harder. Here are a couple of benefits for using shortcuts in your business:
- Perform tasks faster: Shortcuts allow you to perform tasks or actions with a simple combination of keys. This avoids the need for manually navigating your way through your PC with the use of a mouse. This results in much faster task execution.
- Better business processes: In a business setting, employees perform numerous tasks daily. The time saved by using keyboard shortcuts for each individual task starts to add up and you’ll start to save substantial time over weeks and months.
- Easily switch between tasks: According to a joint report by Qatalog and Cornell University’s Idea Lab, 45% of people say context-switching makes them less productive. By using keyboard shortcuts, you reduce this time heavily. This is because there are a range of shortcuts which facilitate quick task switching.
- Reduced Human Error: When using keyboard shortcuts efficiently, you can significantly reduce the likelihood of errors that may occur when manually navigating through menus. This is important in tasks that require precision, such as data entry and content creation.
15 Essential Keyboard Shortcuts to Speed Up Your Day:
- Ctrl + T – Open up a new tab on your internet browser.
- Ctrl + F – Easily find specific text in a document or a web page. This helps when you’re searching for a specific section within an important document without having to read through all of it.
- Ctrl + Shift + T – Ever accidentally closed an important tab you were working on? Easily open the most recently closed tab with this shortcut.
- Win Key + S – This opens the Window Search and allows you to quickly search for apps, files, or do a search on the web.
- Win Key + V – Copying and pasting content is so common in many businesses’ daily routines. The Win Key + V shortcut allows you to view your clipboard history, helping you to easily paste what you have previously copied without having to copy and paste numerous times.
- Win Key + [number] – Open up apps from your taskbar easily with this shortcut. Win Key + 1 will open the first app on your taskbar, Win Key + 2 will open up the second app, and so on. If the app is already running, it switches to that app.
- Win key + Shift + S – Take high-quality screenshots by opening up the snipping tool.
- Ctrl + Shift + Esc – Opens up the the Task Manager.
- Ctrl + Z – Swiftly fix your document mistakes with this shortcut that undo’s an action.
- Ctrl + Y – Accidentally removed a huge chunk of text by mistake? This keyboard shortcut is great for redoing an action without having anyone notice.
- Win Key + I – Opens up the settings App.
- Windows Key + Tab – Are you the type of person who has 10 docs, 5 file locations and 6 different applications all open at the same time? Avoid drowning in all your open your Tak View by using this shortcut. This provides you with an overview of everything that is currently open and allows you to simply transition from one programme to the next.
- Alt + Tab - Quickly switch between all your open windows in Microsoft Windows.
- Ctrl + Shift + N – Create a new folder within file explorer.
- Ctrl + Backspace – Delete an entire word without having to constantly click on your backspace button.