How a mouse can give you productivity superpowers

If you spend a lot of your day sitting in front of a computer, your mouse probably gets quite the workout. You might use it to switch between screens or software, to highlight text, to copy and paste, or perhaps to scroll up and down a page. But what you might not have considered is how this unassuming little device is slowing you down.

Rahul Vohra is the founder and CEO of Superhuman, email software that claims to deliver the world’s fastest email experience (and as a loyal Superhuman user, I can definitely vouch for this claim). Vohra is a designer and entrepreneur who spends much of his day at his computer. He thinks a lot about productivity, for both himself and for Superhuman. One of the ways he designed Superhuman to be such a speedy way to zoom through email comes down to the mouse.

‘When I use Superhuman, I almost never touch the mouse,’ Vohra told me. ‘We designed Superhuman so you can do everything from the keyboard. You can fly through your inbox purely by typing. And that’s a rule I abide by in almost every piece of software I use. I go above and beyond to make sure I’m learning those keyboard shortcuts and becoming more efficient and more productive as a result.’

Vohra describes being able to ‘play’ Superhuman in the same way he can play the piano – through just using his fingers. ‘And that creates a ton of efficiency.’

The key to reducing time spent with your mouse is not to feed it less cheese, but instead to invest time in learning keyboard shortcuts. This is something Vohra obsesses over. And if spending a Saturday night in learning new keyboard shortcuts isn’t your idea of a good time, the good news is that most software shares a common set of shortcuts.

‘Once you start to develop the muscle memory, you can very intuitively learn shortcuts in any new app that you pick up,’ Vohra claims.

For example, you probably know that Command or Control C and Command or Control V will let you copy and paste text or images. And Command or Control B/I/U will let you bold, italicise or underline text. These commands work across almost every software that you use.

And fortunately, additional keyboard shortcuts you invest time in learning will also work across most software, which is great for productivity gains in whatever program you happen to be working in.

​

Put it into action:

1. When working at your computer today, start to notice the actions for which you rely on your mouse most. For example, it might be clicking on the button to compose a new email, it might be scrolling up and down on webpages, or it might be opening and closing new windows.

2. Make a list of these common actions and research the keyboard shortcuts for doing each of them.

3. For two weeks, aim to learn one new keyboard shortcut per day. Repetition will help make it automatic, but if it’s not sinking in and becoming habitual (i.e., you are still sometimes using your mouse to complete the action), don’t move on to the next keyboard shortcut until the current one you are learning is locked into your muscle memory.