“There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.” Beverly Sills
Clearly, Beverly isn’t using Windows 7. All right… maybe that was a stretch. I doubt an opera star whose heyday was in the 60s has technology on her radar. Windows 7, however, has some great built-in shortcuts to make you more productive. I could go on and on about all of the productivity boosters and turn this into a novel. Surprisingly (to those who know me), I’m not going to. I do want to cover one, though, that is a huge timesaver. I wrote in a recent post that “humans are creatures of habit.” I definitely fall into that category. (Well, both of them. I’m human and a creature of habit.) I do things the way I’ve always been doing them, long after there’s a better way. (I was still using the command prompt for everyday activities long into the life of Windows 98.) Despite enhancements in Windows Vista and Windows 7, I still do things the way I did them in XP. I only recently paid any attention to today’s timesaving tip (despite the fact that I have been using Windows 7 since the beta stage). I’m not saying I didn’t know about it – just that I didn’t really stop to think about how much time it could really save me. I’m referring to the “favorites” section built into Windows Explorer.
Now, if you think I just wrote “the ‘favorites’ in Internet Explorer,” then you probably also think that I am an idiot, since it’s been there forever. I’m not. (Well, I’m not talking about IE. The jury is out on whether or not I am an idiot.) I’m talking about Windows Explorer – the interface you use when you’re looking through your documents and files. This window:
Specifically, focus on that “Favorites” list up in the top left corner. How often do you spend looking for files throughout the day? I don’t mean searching for them. That’s a whole different story that I discussed on my old blog. I am referring to files that you know exist in a specific place… “Oh… they’re on the X: drive in the ‘marketing’ folder.” You know exactly how to get to them :
click Start –> Computer –> X: –> Marketing and, whoomp! There it is.
Chances are, you probably have at least a couple folders that you access multiple times every day. And, if your organization is anything like most, they’re in different places. As a result, you spend a significant amount of time clicking Start –> Computer –> etc.
I bet you think I am going to show you an easier way to get to these folders. And I’d say that’s a very safe bet.
Next time you are in one of those folders that you use on a regular basis, just right click on “Favorites” and select “Add current location to favorites.”
It’s that simple. From now on, when you need to get to that folder, you can just click its name in the Favorites section. Do that for all of your frequent (or favorite, if you will) folders and you’ve just saved a considerable amount of time every single day. How you spend that time is up to you!
