Very cool article and technique! Love the sausage story :)
What about shortcuts downsides? Here is a few I can think of:
- Other people won't get your shortcuts, so you have to "translate" (yet another language)
- Other keyboards/input systems won't get your shortcuts, so you have to carry your setup
- Convenient shortcuts may limit the creativity and exploration as one might lean towards a familiar shortcut for speed over researching thesaurus for new words and meanings
On the other hand, the principles described in this article are golden. Planning before doing, reflecting on the past successes and failures, digging to the origin and seeking for improvement to foster growth mindset - all of these things are extremely important, and shortcuts might be a neat way to try something new (fun and efficient!) for the sake of developing the right life habits (ultimate win). I wonder if that was the hidden goal of this article ;)
As for the other two downsides, I don’t think they matter much. I’ve stuck to the same setup for five years already and will not change it anytime soon. And I’m not sharing shortcuts with other people; they only see the output.
Thanks Pascha! You’ve got the implicit goal of this essay right :)
As for downsides, your third point is worth looking into deeply. I believe that creativity is external and is about how a system evolves through its technical states rather than internal magic psychologists refer to often. Thus, by knowing patterns of how technical systems develop and applying thinking models (ie backwards, inversion, anti-objects, etc.), you get to be more creative, not less.
I have a QWERTY keyboard (iPad pro folio) but most of the symbols do not correspond with the symbols they’re supposed to type but are instead shortcuts :)
Thanks Andrei! I’ve tried Dvorak a few years back and got some neat results. But since I’ve started building my own bindings based on how my hands work three years ago (Dvorak is more for the average person; just like avg American has 2.5 dogs), I moved away from both Dvorak and QWERTY.
Very interesting, thank you! Definitely, you have used shortcuts to write this article.
The next article should be about how to read faster. And next how to transfer information without the need to write and read at all (this will be the last one obviously :)
I'm waiting for the day that I can just subvocalize in my head and my subvocalized speech can get written down for me faster than I can type even with these new shortcuts I'm trying.
Hey Hima, the closest thing would be speech2text apps like Drafts (they work quite well). But I’ve found the experience quite different from typing; when you’re dictating you need to have already thought.
Make me think of "Code snippet" in coding. I use code snippet to generate code for me just like shortcut in your idea. For example, typing "fc" will generate "function () {}" for me. It makes me 3x faster coding too.
Fantastic piece. I just went in and created a bunch of shortcuts on my machine, including most of your recommended ones. I look forward to slowly incrementing them!
Question: I've been toying with multiple systems and programs to enhance the active learning process, and keep going back and forth between a basic text editor for note taking or a platform that allows for easy cross linking of ideas. Right now I've settled on Notion for the latter reason, even if its speed is sometimes frustrating. Have you ever experimented with Notion or something similar?
Very interesting article. I think it would be even better including how the Japanese and Chinese languages work, since the Kanji alphabet is very dense, and sort of have the shortcut idea built-in.
I wonder if that is related to why these folks do better than average in school and college 🤔
Shortcuts are very helpful, thank you for sharing this technique!
Of course! I’m glad it's useful.
Wow! Thank you for the article and this technic
Thanks Dmitry! More to come :)
Very cool article and technique! Love the sausage story :)
What about shortcuts downsides? Here is a few I can think of:
- Other people won't get your shortcuts, so you have to "translate" (yet another language)
- Other keyboards/input systems won't get your shortcuts, so you have to carry your setup
- Convenient shortcuts may limit the creativity and exploration as one might lean towards a familiar shortcut for speed over researching thesaurus for new words and meanings
On the other hand, the principles described in this article are golden. Planning before doing, reflecting on the past successes and failures, digging to the origin and seeking for improvement to foster growth mindset - all of these things are extremely important, and shortcuts might be a neat way to try something new (fun and efficient!) for the sake of developing the right life habits (ultimate win). I wonder if that was the hidden goal of this article ;)
Thank you and please post more!
As for the other two downsides, I don’t think they matter much. I’ve stuck to the same setup for five years already and will not change it anytime soon. And I’m not sharing shortcuts with other people; they only see the output.
Thanks Pascha! You’ve got the implicit goal of this essay right :)
As for downsides, your third point is worth looking into deeply. I believe that creativity is external and is about how a system evolves through its technical states rather than internal magic psychologists refer to often. Thus, by knowing patterns of how technical systems develop and applying thinking models (ie backwards, inversion, anti-objects, etc.), you get to be more creative, not less.
Really like the "creativity is external" statement. Will take it for more analysis. Thank you!
Of course!
Thank you for the article and this technic. Very interesting. What about Dvorak keyboard, do you use it in your life? Or it was just for an example?
I have a QWERTY keyboard (iPad pro folio) but most of the symbols do not correspond with the symbols they’re supposed to type but are instead shortcuts :)
Thanks Andrei! I’ve tried Dvorak a few years back and got some neat results. But since I’ve started building my own bindings based on how my hands work three years ago (Dvorak is more for the average person; just like avg American has 2.5 dogs), I moved away from both Dvorak and QWERTY.
Very interesting, thank you! Definitely, you have used shortcuts to write this article.
The next article should be about how to read faster. And next how to transfer information without the need to write and read at all (this will be the last one obviously :)
I'm waiting for the day that I can just subvocalize in my head and my subvocalized speech can get written down for me faster than I can type even with these new shortcuts I'm trying.
Hey Hima, the closest thing would be speech2text apps like Drafts (they work quite well). But I’ve found the experience quite different from typing; when you’re dictating you need to have already thought.
:)
Cool.
Make me think of "Code snippet" in coding. I use code snippet to generate code for me just like shortcut in your idea. For example, typing "fc" will generate "function () {}" for me. It makes me 3x faster coding too.
Any shortcut program suggestions for Windows?
Hey Chris - this one looks good: https://textexpander.com/
Fantastic piece. I just went in and created a bunch of shortcuts on my machine, including most of your recommended ones. I look forward to slowly incrementing them!
Question: I've been toying with multiple systems and programs to enhance the active learning process, and keep going back and forth between a basic text editor for note taking or a platform that allows for easy cross linking of ideas. Right now I've settled on Notion for the latter reason, even if its speed is sometimes frustrating. Have you ever experimented with Notion or something similar?
Very interesting article. I think it would be even better including how the Japanese and Chinese languages work, since the Kanji alphabet is very dense, and sort of have the shortcut idea built-in.
I wonder if that is related to why these folks do better than average in school and college 🤔