Quickly paste text with one hand
Have you mastered touch typing? Do your fingers turn your thoughts into words on the screen so quickly that you think you cannot type any faster?
What if you could enter text even faster, using just one hand and two or three fingers? Of course, you won't be able to write a novel, memoirs or a love letter this way. But you will be able to significantly speed up your routine work. Think about the little repetitive tasks that constantly eat up precious seconds of your time.
I work at the computer a lot and my hands are always on the keyboard typing something, because I'm a software developer. I code, write descriptions, help manuals, create websites, optimize them, answer users' questions, post in message boards and my blog. Flashpaste is my everyday assistant which saves me a great deal of time. That's why I created it :)
I want to tell you about an often overlooked Flashpaste feature that lets you paste text quickly. It will take you only ten minutes to understand how to quickly paste text using Hot Key Labels, but the effect will be striking. You might think that Flashpaste is useful only for long texts, such as standard replies to support requests, and that typing short phrases is faster than pasting them. Let me show you how to paste short phrases just as easily.
You can instantly paste any texts using one hand. To do this, you need:
- Download and install Flashpaste and add your text fragments into the database.
- Enable the Hot Key Label mode in the program settings and read the corresponding section of the manual.
- Choose the primary hot key, e.g. + on the numeric keypad (Num +)
- Spend five minutes memorizing the numbers of the text fragments you need.
- That's it!
Once in a while I release a new product, create a website, register it in directories, and write a product description and user manual. I constantly use the same words - product name, website address, e-mail etc. It's easy if the product has a short name, but what if it is long? What if the product is called Clipdiary Clipboard History Manager? In Flashpaste I create a folder where I store all the text fragments corresponding to the product.
Now when I need to paste the product name, my right hand automatically presses "+, 3, 1" on the numeric keypad - and "Clipdiary Clipboard History Manager" is inserted into the document. That takes about one second and three key presses instead of typing the full name. OK, a few seconds saved for rest and entertainment :)
A few explanations in case it isn't quite clear:
- "+" - Hot key to launch Flashpaste
- "3" - Number of the folder containing text for the project.
- "1" - Number of the fragment, which is used to store the text.
The website address is "+ 3 2", the RSS feed is "+ 3 3", the email address is "+ 3 4", and so on. Each project usually has more than 10 fragments. This frees up time that would otherwise be spent typing the same lines over and over again.
Webmasters, do you still type the addresses of your websites manually?
Try to paste text using one hand instead of typing it again and again. Try the hot key paste mode and you will love it!
P.S. In reality, since I often use the numeric keypad, it wouldn't be very convenient for me to compromise its primary purpose. So, for pasting tasks I use the combination of "+" and the CTRL key. However, since I press CTRL using my left hand and "+" and digits - with the right hand, this doesn't affect the pasting speed.
