Working through your inbox without a mouse

Learning every shortcut is not the goal. Learning six and using them constantly is, and it is the difference between working an inbox and wading through one.

Why it is worth the hour

The saving is not really the seconds. It is that reaching for the mouse breaks your attention. A backlog cleared in one unbroken run goes far faster than the same threads handled one at a time, with pauses in between.

It takes about an hour of deliberate practice before it stops being slower than the mouse. That hour pays for itself in a week.

The six keys that matter

J and K

Move to the next and previous thread.

M

Assign it to yourself.

R

Jump into the reply box.

Cmd+Shift+S then R

Resolve it.

Cmd+K

The command palette, for everything else.

That is the whole set. Everything in the full list is useful, but these five or six carry almost all the value.

The loop

Pick a filtered list first, such as My Threads, Unassigned, or Due soon. Then:

1. 1Press G then I to get to the inbox.
2. 2Press J to open the first thread.
3. 3Read it.
4. 4Press M to take it, if it is yours to answer.
5. 5Press R to jump into the composer, and write your reply.
6. 6Send it with Enter, if you have Enter sends message on.
7. 7Press Cmd+Shift+S then R to resolve.
8. 8Press J for the next one.

After a dozen threads the sequence stops being a list of steps and becomes one movement.

Triaging without replying

A different loop, for when you are sorting rather than answering: decide, label, move on.

1. 1J to the next thread.
2. 2L to add a label.
3. 3Cmd+K, then "priority", to set one.
4. 4Z to snooze anything you cannot deal with today.
5. 5J again.

Twenty threads triaged this way takes a couple of minutes and leaves the inbox in a state somebody else can pick up.

Handing something over

When a thread is not yours:

1. 1Cmd+Shift+P to switch the composer to a private note.
2. 2Type @ and the colleague's name, and say what you need.
3. 3Send it.
4. 4A to assign the thread to them.
5. 5J to move on.

Learning them without trying

Do not sit down with the list. Three habits do it for you.

• Use the command palette for everything for a week. It shows the shortcut beside each action, so you absorb them while getting work done.
• Notice the letters in menus. The status menu shows R, C and S beside its options every time you open it.
• Pick one key a day. Force yourself to use M for a day, then J, then R. One at a time sticks; a list of twenty does not.

What still needs the mouse

Some things have no shortcut, and pretending otherwise wastes time.

• Choosing a particular person from the assignee list, once it is open.
• Reading the context panel, which holds sentiment, the summary and the feed.
• Anything in Settings beyond getting there.
• Clicking a row in Insights to see the threads behind a number.

The keyboard is for the loop: move, take, reply, resolve. Everything else is fine with a mouse, and there is no prize for avoiding one. ---