Learn keyboard shortcuts

You should try to use your mouse as little as possible.

It's not an over-optimization to take all of the repetitive tasks you have and to turn them into a quick combination of keystrokes. It might seem like a small amount of time to save, but the amount of time you take moving your hands from the keyboard to your mouse, finding the thing you want to click, and interacting with it really adds up. Let's say you save one second every two minutes by never touching your mouse again. If you're on your computer for five hours in a day, you're already saving 2.5 minutes a day. Those numbers are almost certainly quite conservative estimates — I'd encourage you to try it and then extrapolate out the numbers to see how many hours a month you might save.

More importantly, though, there's a fact that I find is too rarely engaged with: keyboard shortcuts are cool. Not only is it a badge of honor in certain circles to use as many keyboard shortcuts as possible, I don't think it's absurd to admit that using keyboard shortcuts makes me feel cool. I like feeling that connection to the tools I use, and like I've earned the knowledge to use them well.

There's a particular flow state that comes from executing commands solely with your keyboard. When I type a keyboard shortcut that I have locked in to my workflow, it feels like driving a car: I don't think about the mechanical actions that go into turning left, my body just turns the car to the left. Similarly, I don't think about the keyboard shortcut to delete a whole word on macOS, I just do it.  If you asked me what the keyboard shortcut even was, I think I'd have a really hard time telling you if I wasn't in front of a computer. (It's option + delete, and I had to look at my fingers on the keyboard to verify this, even though I've typed it 188 times today, 3,262 times this week, and 104,451 times this year.¹) This means that, once I'm in the flow, there are far fewer opportunities to break out of it — it all becomes part of the same process.

I also have to make sure I mention the benefits that you get from designing your applications for keyboard navigation — this is one of the key parts of making sure your application is fully accessible to everyone.

Get in the habit of noticing every time you need to switch to your mouse, and when you do, go look up the keyboard shortcut for that action instead. It's very likely there is one, and when you learn it, you'll gain a little more expertise in how to use your tools.

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1. I know this thanks to WhatPulse, which I've been using for over 19 years.