Keyboard shortcut wizardy 🧙‍♂️✨
As much as I hate the term “productivity hack,” that's exactly what I've got for you today. And it's a real doozy.
With a lil' bit of setup, you can create custom keyboard shortcuts to quickly launch your most used apps, dashboards, URLs, pieces of writing, etc.
For instance, when I hit the combo of “Capslock + E” my editorial calendar in Obsidian magically pops up. This makes it obscenely fast to capture ideas, or go to a specific piece of writing.
When I hit “Capslock + G,” my personal dashboard in Notion opens up. “Capslock + F” leads to my digital food journal.
It also works for frequently used URLs. I have hotkeys set up to take me to this thread where I'm documenting my training for a GoRuck event, and this thread where I'm keeping track of my creative endeavors.
These hotkeys reduce the time it takes to navigate to your most-used digital spaces and documents. And they reduce the odds of you getting lost or distracted along the way, which is particularly important on twitter.
Since I started doing this 3-4 years ago, I've saved a boatload of time.
Ok, so how do you set this up for yourself?
For starters, everything from here on out is for Mac users. I'm sure you can do this on Windows and Linux and whatever else. But I haven't been in those worlds for a long time.
If you're still with me, you'll need two pieces of software.
With Karabiner Elements, you can map the Capslock key to be a “super modifier,” where pressing it is the equivalent of holding down command, alt, control, and shift at the same time. Pretty dope.
From there, Keyboard Maestro makes it easy to create simple automations, where you press a hotkey, then a specific action (or sequence of actions) happens.
So for instance, my “Capslock + E” combo triggers a certain page using Obsidian's URL scheme. Capslock + T takes me to a specific twitter thread. Etc.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for what you can do with this. Keyboard Maestro is freakishly powerful. But even just simple things like this can help you feel like a magical wizard as you navigate around in your digital life.
Good luck, and godspeed.
P.S. I recorded a quick video showing this whole system in action.