Have you ever thought about how much time you’re WASTING by not regularly using keyboard shortcuts on your computer? Brainscape has.

In fact, we’ve calculated exactly how much time you’re likely wasting per year, and the results will blow your mind. The potential productivity gains from every American memorizing their most important Mac, PC, spreadsheet, Gmail, and web browser shortcuts could literally be enough to turn our economy around.

The premise of our calculations (below) is based on our observation that most people lose an average of 2 seconds per minute of work by switching back and forth from their mouse instead of using the analogous keyboard shortcut.

For example, to open a new tab in a web browser, most people move their hand to the mouse, then move the cursor to the “+” button to the right of their other open tabs, then click that button, then switch their hands back to the keyboard to type their desired search term or URL. Yet opening a new browser tab could be done much more quickly by simply typing the keys “CTRL + t” (or “CMD + t” on a Mac). Learning just this single shortcut could save you several cumulative hours over the course of a year.

So how much time could each American save each year by just spending 20 minutes drilling themselves on all their most important keyboard shortcuts today?

8 Days per year

That’s right. If your job requires you to be working on a computer throughout each standard 8-hour workday, then using keyboard shortcuts can save you 8 entire workdays every year. This is equal to 3.3% of your total productivity! If every American were to use Brainscape’s keyboard shortcuts memorization tool to memorize their keyboard shortcuts, our collective economic growth could be boosted enough to restore a healthy growth rate and place our economy on more competitive footing for the next decade.

Here’s a quick derivation of how we got this figure:

[2 wasted seconds / min] * [480 min /workday] * [240 workdays / year] = 64 wasted hours / year!

“Learn your keyboard shortcuts” is the new “eat your vegetables.” Don’t wait any longer to drill your shortcuts into your head!

Keyboard shortcuts could revive America’s economy, and here at Brainscape we offer a digital flashcard subject to help you learn all the keyboard shortcuts you could ever need— check out our keyboard shortcuts flashcards!