When working in the IT field, it's essential that you work quickly and efficiently. You might not realize it at first, but all of those extra tasks you perform throughout the day can add up to minutes or even hours lost. That's money you could've been earning!
In all seriousness, this is a major problem. But how are you wasting time, you might wonder? We're not talking about procrastination or distractions like checking your personal social media sites during the day. No, this is about the things that you do while hard at work. You likely use a mouse if you work at a desk. Did you know that lifting your hands from the keyboard to use the mouse could actually waste a considerable amount of time? You could seriously shave hours off of your work schedule and streamline your productivity just by keeping your fingers to the keyboard.
This means using keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys to get the tasks done that you'd normally use a mouse for. Yes, you can scroll up and down, search, access the help menu, and more all from your keyboard.
The trick is knowing those commands and memorizing them. Of course, having to hunt and peck for the right keys to execute these commands could waste more time than just using the mouse at first. But once you get past the initial learning curve, you'll be well on your way to saving time in a big way.
Most programs utilize a few basic shortcut keys. For instance, in your web browser you can use the letters J and K to scroll up and down the page. And you can use / or Command + F to search a page. Additionally, pressing the ? key will usually give you access to the help menu for the given program.
But individual websites and programs have their own specific hotkeys as well. These will be included in each site or program's documentation, allowing you to reference it at will.
Of course, memorizing the hotkeys is the best route to saving time. For instance, on Twitter, you can load up a direct message by pressing M and reload the page to show new tweets by pressing ".". A new tweet can be made by pressing N and so on. There are shortcuts for just about everything, and while you can't possibly memorize them for every program and every website, you can do yourself a favor and save time by memorizing those you use the most for IT functions.