The first thing I do when I sit down at my computer is reach for the mouse. How could I possibly function without my mouse? It has become so easy for me to forget that there are ways to function beyond the mouse.
When I use our water billing software I often forget to switch my brain over to the keyboard. Back in my early word processing days I remember the cheat sheet that fit over the function keys. It saved hours of time as it provided instant guidance on what keystrokes would get me where. Now, on my road to recovery from being a mouse addict, I’ve come to realize that I want my time back. In my world, I want to be efficient, effective, and go home on time.
In the world of data entry keystrokes are king and the fewer the better. Sure there is a time and place to use the mouse, but if you spend time moving the mouse around and clicking you lose valuable seconds. Take for example our one of our customer lookup features. You could reach for the mouse and move it to the top of the screen and click the icon, then click a lookup field, type information and then click search. Sure, it doesn’t take that long but when you’re looking at doing that up to a hundred times a day you might want to try the keyboard. F3 gets the lookup table to open, tab and entering the first letter of the field you’d like to look up autofills that data, then you’d enter your search information, hit tab and enter and voila! Your search is done in a couple of seconds and push enter on account you’d like to pull up.
I encourage you to find instances throughout your billing software that would allow you to use keystrokes rather than the mouse. I’ve overcome my mouse addiction when it comes to entering payments and looking up account numbers that weren’t included with the payments. It hasn’t been an easy road to recovery but I’m proud to say I don’t reach for my mouse anymore.
