Have you ever thought about how much time you’re WASTING by not regularly using keyboard shortcuts on your computer?  Brainscape has.  In fact, we’ve calculated exactly how much time you’re likely wasting per year, and the results will blow your mind.  The potential productivity gains from every American memorizing their most important Mac, PC, spreadsheet, gmail, and web browser shortcuts could literally be enough to turn our economy around.

The premise of our calculations (below) is based on our observation that most people lose an average of 2 seconds per minute of work by switching back & forth from their mouse instead of using the analogous keyboard shortcut.  For example, to open a new tab in a web browser, most people move their hand to the mouse, then move the cursor to the “+” button to the right of their other open tabs, then click that button, then switch their hands back to the keyboard to type their desired search term or URL.  Yet opening a new browser tab could be done much more quickly by simply typing the keys “CTRL + t” (or “CMD + t“ on a Mac). Learning just this single shortcut could save you several cumulative hours over the course of a year.

So how much time could each American save each year by just spending 20 minutes drilling themselves on all their most important keyboard shortcuts today? (more…)