Introduction
If you're reading this, there's a good chance you use a computer almost every day. And once your machine is no longer the bottleneck, the last limit is you - more precisely, how fast you use your keyboard and mouse.
The good news is that these are simple levers to improve, with an immediate return on investment.
Speed up with your mouse or trackpad
Let's start with the mouse. The specific model matters less than you think; most standard mice do the job just fine.
What really changes everything is pointer speed.
By default, it's often set far too low. Result: you make unnecessary movements just to reach areas of the screen.
If you use a mouse, push speed to 80%, even 100%. The first minutes can feel chaotic, but you adapt quickly - and going back becomes impossible.
If you use a trackpad, the rule is simple: when you move your finger across the diagonal, the cursor should travel at least the diagonal of the screen. Otherwise, you waste time constantly repositioning your hand.
The real lever is the keyboard
The biggest speed potential isn't the mouse - it's the keyboard.
There are different keyboard layouts. In French, AZERTY is the standard, inherited from typewriters. Other layouts like BEPO or DVORAK were designed to optimize modern typing, but they remain niche.
In practice, that's not the main factor.
What truly matters is touch typing.
If you still type with two fingers, you're leaving a lot of speed on the table. A quick online typing test will show you your margin. Below 30 words per minute, there's huge upside. With a bit of practice, 50 to 60 words per minute is realistic for almost everyone.
Touch typing is a perfect example of the J-curve. You'll slow down at first because you're unlearning habits. Then you'll end up well above your original level.
Learn the right keyboard shortcuts
Another massive accelerator: keyboard shortcuts.
There are the obvious ones: copy, paste, undo, select all. But there are many others, often underused, that let you chain actions without leaving the keyboard.
For example, in email, knowing shortcuts to reply, forward, or archive radically changes your processing pace. If you've already built a strategy to handle 300 emails a day, learning those shortcuts is a natural next step.
The best approach is to identify the tools you use most often, then learn only their essential shortcuts. No need to memorize everything at once.
Use a clipboard manager
One last tool people often ignore: a clipboard manager.
By default, copying new text overwrites what you copied before. With a manager, everything you copy is kept - text, links, images - in a searchable history.
Concretely, you can retrieve something you copied days ago, or quickly reuse recurring information without hunting for it again. Combined with a tool like a text expander, it's a major time saver.
Practice is the key
None of these tools work without practice. Increasing pointer speed, learning proper typing, memorizing a few shortcuts - they all require a small initial effort.
But once they're embedded, these habits reduce fatigue and frustration and free up mental energy for important work.
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