60+ of My Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts

Introduction

When I joined Kasa — at the time, a 30-person seed-stage startup — in 2019, I had an ever-growing to-do list, way too many meetings, and a complete lack of resources. “Building the plane while flying it” is the term many startup founders and employees use, and this metaphor perfectly described my startup experience. Each week felt like a month, each month a quarter, and each year a decade. It was high stakes, and I loved it.

While I’d always considered myself a productivity guru, I forced myself to become even more productive. If I saw a shortcut that a colleague was using, I asked them about it and wrote it down. I researched the internet, read blogs, and even subscribed to some 21-day learning programs. Along the way, I kept thinking “I must know it all now” and then would learn something new (I even learned a couple of shortcuts doing research for this article!).

I was stoked with my pace of growth, but quickly realized I wasn’t doing a good job of training my team; thus, I began sharing my knowledge to enable their growth. I disseminated many of these shortcuts in onboarding documents, team standups, 1:1s meetings, and company-wide All Hands. Below is a comprehensive list of my favorites!

Before Getting Started

Before sharing a long-and-overwhelming list of shortcuts (there are over 60 below), It’s important to note some strategies for learning shortcuts:

1. Start with the basics: Begin by focusing on a few essential keyboard shortcuts that are commonly used across different applications, such as copy (Ctrl+C), paste (Ctrl+V), and undo (Ctrl+Z). Mastering these fundamental shortcuts will give you a solid foundation. Once you know the basics…

2. Identify 3-5 new shortcuts: Look at the list below and identify 3-5 new shortcuts, ideally in the same software (i.e. pick 3-5 of the Chrome shortcuts you want to learn). Then…

3. Write them down, and practice daily: Write down the 3-5 shortcuts on a sticky note. For at least a week, focus on using these shortcuts daily. If you’re struggling to remember them or use them, consider:

   1. Creating mnemonics: it’s often easy to remember things like c for copy, b for bold, and n for new

   2. Creating associations: cmd/ctrl + v (for paste) is easier to remember since it’s right next to cmd/ctrl + c (for copy); I struggled to use cmd/ctrl + w (to close a tab) until I realized it was next to cmd/ctrl + q (which closes a window)

4. Don’t give up: it takes a considerable amount of time to learn all these shortcuts, so don’t think you’ll learn them overnight. If certain ones aren’t clicking, push them aside and come back to them later. If you’re not using the shortcut regularly, it might not be that valuable anyway 🙂

A long list of shortcuts

a. All Programs

These work in nearly every software, and are a great place to start.

b. Chrome

Other helpful Chrome productivity hacks:

• To close a lot of tabs at once, right-click on the open tab and click “Close Other Tabs” or “Close Tabs to the Right”

• Right-click a tab and click “pin” to minimize its size on the tab bar

  • I like this one because it allows me to keep Gmail, GCal, my to-do list, and my Notion home page open without constantly closing and re-opening them!

c. Gmail

First, enable shortcuts for these to work! Go to Settings (⚙️) → See All Settings → Click “Keyboard Shortcuts On” → Save Changes.

Basic:

• Compose email = c

• Archive = e

• Reply = r

• Open email = enter

• Next email = j

• Previous email = k

• Unsend email (within 5 seconds) = z

• Mark as unread = shift + u

Advanced:

d. Notion

I’ve included my 10 favorite Notion shortcuts below. For a full list, check out Notion’s page here.

• ###, ##, or # followed by spacebar = Large title, Medium title, and small title

• To embed a link (like this), highlight text and then paste a URL directly (the same works in Slack)

• “-” followed by space = creates a bulleted list

• “>” followed by space = create a toggle list

• Type ~ on either side of text to strikethrough like this (the same works in WhatsApp)

• /page to create a new page (broadly the “/” key gives a lot of options!)

• Add an emoji by typing “:” and then the name of the emoji

• ⌘ + [ = go back a page

• ⌘ + ] = go forward a page

• ⌘ + shift + m = add a comment

• ⌘ + shift + l = toggles between light + dark mode

e. Other Shortcuts

Highlighting + navigating text quickly:

Mac-specific shortcuts:

• ⌘ + tab = switch applications

• ⌘ + ` (the key with the ~) = switch screens in the same application (great for navigating different Chrome windows)

• ⌘ + shift + 4 = screenshot

• ⌘ + shift + 5 = record screen

Have any favorite shortcuts that I’m missing above? Leave a comment below!