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Who says there are no shortcuts to any place worth going?

February 9, 2009 :: 1:16 pm :: Being a Small Business, DIY and Craft Tutorials :: no comments

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going? Rubbish! For without my daily shortcuts, I would be going nowhere fast. Or at least, somewhere a lot more slowly. No disrespect to Beverly Sills from whom the quote originated, especially since I’ve gone and taken it all out of context.

So I was reading the chapter in David Allen’s Getting Things Done on how to process your inbox to empty, and he wrote:

If you’re in a large-volume e-mail environment, you’ll greatly improve your productivity by increasing your typing speed and using the shortcut keyboard commands for your operating system and your common e-mail software. Too many sophisticated professionals are seriously hamstrung because they still hunt and peck and try to use their mouse too much.

How true! How many times have you hovered next to a co-worker and been driven mad by their slow typing and/or cumbersome fumbling between mouse and keyboard? “GAH! Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow!”, I’d scream in my head! “Ctrl+Shift+Right Arrow, why don’t you?!” Not that I have that problem working from home any more, but still.

So I was inspired to pull together a collection of handy shortcuts I’ve adopted for the tools I use most often these days: Etsy, Gmail and of course Windows XP. Come on, you know you’re excited.

Shortcuts for your Etsy shop

Etsyhacks
For Etsy I recently started using a handful of etsyhacks to save some time. Etsyhacks are little programs created by the code-tinkering husband of an Etsy seller that alter the view of your web pages and basically allow you to take shortcuts between actions.

Say for example that you have to leave feedback for 10 customers. Etsy has a convenient batch feedback tool to let you submit all your feedback from one form, but you still have to tab from one customer to the next, selecting the appropriate radio button and copy/pasting the feedback for each customer individually. Even if you use keyboard shortcuts, that can be a lot of tabbing and Ctrl+V-ing.

Well thank goodness for geeks! Ian at etsyhacks offers a tool called Fast Batch Feedback where, if you have the same Positive feedback to leave for everyone (since presumably you’re gonna wanna leave shiny happy positive feedback for all those wonderful customers right?!), you can truly just select Positive once, type up your feedback text once, and submit!

image from etsyhacks

There are two ways you can install etsyhacks: one is by using the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox, the other is by using bookmarklets. I use Greasemonkey and it’s a total no-brainer to install and get right to using the etsyhacks.

One of my favorite hacks is Copy Listing, which gives you the ability to quickly copy an existing product listing instead of starting fresh from a new listing and filling out all the fields from scratch.

My next favorite is Edit This Item, which lets you jump to a specific page you want to edit for a product listing instead of going back one page, forward one page, or skipping to the very last page. I’ve always hated having to wait for the Tags page to load when I’m editing a listing, so with this hack I can skip right over that page. Yay!

There are a slew of others that Ian discusses in his etsyhacks blog. Thanks Ian!

Using Gmail to Filter Etsy Order and PayPal Payment Emails
I’ve also found it helpful to set up some filters in Gmail that help me quickly find emails related to Etsy orders I’ve received. This process involves 1) setting up an email filter and 2) creating a Quick Link to it in Gmail.

1) My Gmail filter

2) My Quick Link, which sits in the left column of my Gmail window

This way when I’m printing shipping labels and want to quickly compare the customer’s address in PayPal to the shipping address they supplied on Etsy, I click on my Quick Link and then it’s just a matter of using the keystrokes k, j and o (see below for Gmail keyboard shortcuts) to toggle back and forth between the Etsy and PayPal emails.

Keyboard shortcuts for Gmail
I haven’t been able to bring my unread messages down to zero ever since I got lost in the final throes of wedding planning in January 2008. But having finally taken the time recently to learn more keyboard shortcuts for Gmail, I’m a tad closer.

These are the four keyboard shortcuts I use every morning to quickly scan through the latest messages in my inbox and immediately trash messages that I know I don’t even need to open:

k = Move to newer conversation
j = Move to older conversation
x = Select conversation
# = Delete

Then, for the messages I do need to open and take action on:

c = Compose
o or <Enter> = Open
r = Reply
a = Reply all
f = forward
l = Label
<tab> then <Enter> = Send message
g+i = Go back to Inbox

see the full list of Gmail keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts for Windows XP
Then of course there are the operating system shortcuts. There are a bazillion and I think most people already have a bunch of these in their repertoire, so here are some that may be less well known and are irrefutably handy (at least I think so):

General
- CTRL+any of the arrow keys (Moves the insertion point to the beginning of the next/previous word or paragraph)
- CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys (Highlight a block of text)
- ALT+F4 (Close the active item, or quit the active program)
- CTRL+ESC (Display the Start menu)
Microsoft natural keyboard shortcuts
- Windows Logo+D (Display the desktop)
  Windows Logo+M (Minimize all of the windows)
  Windows Logo+SHIFT+M (Restore the minimized windows)
  Windows Logo+E (Open My Computer)
Windows Explorer
- LEFT ARROW (Collapse the current selection if it is expanded, or select the parent folder)
- RIGHT ARROW (Display the current selection if it is collapsed, or select the first subfolder)