by Jason
Salas,
KUAM.COM
July 03, 2001
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him use PivotTables and Mail Merge"
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"You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him use PivotTables and Mail Merge" |
You know folks, it’s the purpose of software to help you work better. When I
see people fretting and frustrated over how difficult software is, this
frustrates me in return, because it undermines the true purpose of productivity
applications. It’s the collective effort of software to help you work
smarter, not harder. And despite the best efforts of software engineers,
testers, marketers, and programmers all over the world, you can lead a horse to
water, but you can’t make him use PivotTables and Mail Merge functions.
In fact, one of the first things I look for when consulting is to find out
whether the people using software applications are saving time by the use of
technology products, or in fact spending more time working due to unnecessary
repetition and process redundancy.
When I was at Microsoft, a harrowing truism loomed over the group which
developed Word, which brought the harsh reality of the computer-using community
crashing down on them. The theory says, in part that the team continually
has largescale, grandiose plans for Word, and if given the green light, could
very well pad the world’s leading word processing application with features,
gizmos, bells and whistles and other enhancements that would make it possibly
the best computer program ever written. Yet, at the end of each day each
developer has to remind themselves of a simple fact - that they’re there to
build an electronic typewriter – and nothing more.
The lesson learned? Even advanced computer users rarely use every single
feature built into a program, and the general consumer base for an application
won’t even use 30% of the tools and enhancements meant to speed up production.
Bummer.
On any level, it makes sense to want to work faster while minimizing repetitive
tasks and streamlining mundane processes. (This is the true purpose of
computers, if you didn’t know.) There are literally thousands of
shortcuts, tips and tricks swimming around the Windows family of desktop
operating systems, all based on predefined commands that exist in response to
mouseclicks or other actions. Knowing a few of these shortcuts can really
cut down on the time spent it takes you to carry out tasks, in addition to
saving the wear and tear on your mouse (and not to mention your wrist!) If
you're like me, you think faster than you can type, and forget what you thought
about just as quickly. So, I need to be able to jot down notes as quickly
as possible, without running to brad the mouse every four seconds to click.
So, shortcuts are essential for me.
So, while mastering every single nuance of applications is too much of a burden
to impose on most users, here are some helpful tips that you could use to make
your Windows experience more productive and hopefully, more enjoyable.
Popular Windows shortcuts
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