How much time do shortcuts really save you? It shocked me
Hey, so obviously with our business in shortcuts, take everything that I say as completely biased, and it's probably best to skip reading.
I will aim to keep the estimates on the low end!
Working in GameDev and Engineering for the last 7 years, I've used countless software tools and have come to see the light: shortcuts are everything. I almost always stick to shortcuts, only clicking when there's no other choice (I know, I'm a Wiz! +🧙- Pro tip: Windows Key + . opens up the emoji keyboard).
To demonstrate the power of taking the shortcut, let's see how much it can save you. Recently I have been doing a lot of work in Blender, but take my data and you can probably overlay it to any software of your choice. I will calculate the number of functions I input by modelling a character for a friends indie game. It's a low poly character model around 2400 verts, with no complex painting or sculpting that would massively increase the number of functions (so if you are a sculptor or painter the functions you will use is probably 2-3x what I will do here).
I came back after finishing and it took me 2hrs 18min time, during which I input 577 functions (recorded using a keylogger). This seems like a lot but think about every time you need to grab a vertex and move it slightly because it snapped to the wrong vertex or maybe you needed to move it on both the x and z axis.
Functions per hour = 577 / 2hrs 18min = 251
Calculations:
My most used functions were select, grab, fill, snap to view, extrude, inset, linked select, and edge loop. I will use these to give me an average time to click a function vs keyboard shortcut.
Estimates include reaction time and are based on my own timings.
Average click + navigation time = 2.6s (lower 1.2s menu easy access functions from side bar, like move, scale, rotate, not selection as needs long press to change type)
Average shortcut time = 0.45s
Average time saved = Average shortcut time - Average click time = 2.15s
Now given my results we can calculate the time saved a year assuming you are productive for 7 hours of every work day and work 200 days a year:
(251(functions per hour) x 2.15(Average time saved)) x 70%(Productive working) x 2080(hours worked per year)
= 218 hours
Calculations and data may be skewed negatively by Coffee/Tea interludes occupying my left keyboard hand. (I do however posses a rather fancy RAZER mouse with some side buttons, so I am not totally handicapped)
