Using custom gestures to speed up common tasks
Jonathan Levi
Lesson Info
20. Using custom gestures to speed up common tasks
Lessons
Class Introduction: Structure & how to succeed
03:57 2Why do things quicker
05:14 3Where most people spend (or waste) their time
04:48 4Quiz: Chapter 1
5The power of preparation
03:11 6Having clear priorities & goals - and making them "SMART"
07:38Organizing priorities with the Priority Star Exercise
09:19 8Setting deadlines & and making them real
04:18 9The Pareto Principle - our secret to being effective
03:57 10The "Bad" kind of multitasking, avoiding distractions, and meditation
07:43 11Batching similar tasks
03:48 12The "Good" kind of multitasking & the wheel of life
04:26 13Planning for structured rest periods
05:57 14Using small chunks of wasted time effectively
04:16 15Quiz - Chapter 2
16Just how much time are you wasting on your computer?
06:44 17Automating meeting scheduling
04:56 18Text expansion - stop typing the same things over and over
04:24 19Speaking is faster than typing - and clicking
05:33 20Using custom gestures to speed up common tasks
03:43 21Launchers - act without doing
06:02 22Wasting less time reading and sorting through email
03:41 23Automating simple, repetitive tasks effectively across the web
05:03 24Watching lectures, videos, and podcasts faster
04:48 25Quiz: Chapter 3
26Getting fit in fewer hours
04:10 27Spend less time cooking
04:02 28Sleeping less and feeling better
06:00 29Quiz - Chapter 4
30Monitoring your finances automatically
04:30 31Paying bills automatically
05:29 32Quiz - Chapter 5
33Some things just aren_t worth your time
11:21 34Thoughts & tips on "outsourcing"
06:18 35Speeding up decisions
09:14 36Speeding up communication
05:12 37Splitting Time Into “Maker” and “Manager” Days
05:06 38Quiz - Chapter 6
39What we've learned, conclusion, and congratulations
02:51 40Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Using custom gestures to speed up common tasks
So now that we've started to shy away from a lot of the manual clicking around and typing that has been wasting countless minutes in our day and distracting us from actually creating productive work. Let's take it a bit further. Did you know that you can set automated shortcuts or gestures on your computer to speed up the things that you frequently do. This goes way beyond those standard keyboard shortcuts that you probably already use every day, such as open save copy paste and so on. Instead using gestures or even keyboard shortcuts can dramatically change the way you use apps and the different things you do on the Mac. We have a really great big trackpad and a special app that I love called Better Touch tool or B. TT. This tool allows you to create any kind of gestures, one finger, two fingers, three fingers four and you can set different patterns of movement. Then you can assign just about any keyboard shortcut to the computer for that gesture, which saves you from having to memori...
ze all the keyboard shortcuts. You can also use better touch tool to automatically snap to different sizes of windows, move windows across monitors and lots of cool features just like that. It even works with apple remote magic mouses and leap motion, touchless controllers. In fact, later on we're going to learn how to string together multiple actions. Like opening up a few programs you use together all with one hot key. Now that will make better touch tool even more useful because you can string things together. One of the coolest B TT shortcuts that I've ever created was when I clicked five fingers on my trackpad and my computer would open my favorite movie watching app, turn on airplay, move the app to the big screen tv and then dim and change the colors of all the smart lights in my house turning off the ones that aren't in my living room. Now, I'm sure you're curious how I did all of that, but we'll get to that in a couple of lectures from now. For now. Let me share with you. Some of my favorite uses four tools like B. TT, which saved me lots of time and keep me from having to use the mouse. I'm also including a blog post that I wrote a while back that shares all of my configuration specs so that you can duplicate them on my computer. I have three finger gestures to forward reply or archive mail depending on the direction. I rotate my fingers left or right to switch tabs in my browser or chat window. I use four finger tops to maximize windows and five finger tops to move windows to my other monitors. I then have three finger click swipes with different key variants to make windows a quarter size half size or even a third size of the page and much much more. Now I know this may not sound like it saves me a lot of time, but it goes beyond shaving off the 10 seconds here and there to select things or drag Windows. It keeps me from getting distracted or frustrated when I have to mouse to the other side of the screen to perform simple actions like maximizing Windows, it's something small, but I think it'll really help streamline a lot of your work. These shortcuts are one of the reasons that I can often go through 50 emails in just 10 minutes up next. We're going to take it even further than gestures or minimizing typing. We're going to learn to act without doing.
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