By: Dr. Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Sr. Associate Editor, ICN Group
(In the last 2 articles, we knew how to practice speed reading and prepare mind maps. Today, we will see how to inculcate some more skills.)
LEARN NEW SKILLS
Learn touch typing skills
NOIDA: We all know that in the present age of information overload, after 10+2, life is going to become hell, if during your higher studies your typing speed is not fast. You have to type a lot of material; as in almost all courses of higher study, too many project works have to be done. You must have seen that lots of people type with only two fingers. This wastes too much time in typing. What happens that with practice, your brain knows that where is the key ‘q’ and where is the key ‘p’ but you have to physically carry the same finger to another place for typing next letter. It takes lot of time. The solution is to practice ‘touch typing’, which is done by using all of your fingers for typing.
Even if you already use touch typing and your typing speed is in the range of 25-30 wpm, just imagine what will happen if the typing speed touches the range of 50-60 wpm. That means saving of 50% of the time otherwise required for typing of your projects. This skill can be learnt with a practice of touch typing for just 5-10 minutes a day. Even in the offices, typing skills are essential as most of the work is done at computers. Even top executives type on computers as they have to reply lots of emails themselves. You can save lot of time in typing your documents, emails etc., if your typing speed improves.
Learn to effectively use computers & internet
Auto correct option: On the computer, make use of auto-correct option. When we prepare any project, there are certain words which are long and are used repetitively. We should assign an auto correct entry once and later, it will save a lot of time. For example, In my office, I used ‘hsc’ for Hon’ble Supreme Court and ‘ht’ for Hon’ble Tribunal and ‘hc’ for ‘High Court’ and ‘hhc’ for ‘Hon’ble High Court’, ‘yf’ for ‘Yours faithfully’, etc. This saved lot of time later. You can develop a list of words, frequently used by you in your day to day life and then input these entries into your word typing programme. You should make the auto correct entries, which are easy to remember and are logically connected to the desired words as I explained in above entries. You will wonder, how fast you will remember these small auto correct entries. You should also type your frequent auto correct entries in an excel worksheet, so that when you change your computer, the same auto correct entries may be created in the new computer also.
Use inbuilt templates: Whether you are using MS Word or Mac on your computer, these programmes provide various inbuilt templates to suit different types of needs. At least 99% of the people are habitual of opening a new Word file and start typing from scratch. They don’t know that by default, the software is set to open a blank file, whenever you start the programme, but the fact is that ‘Blank’ document is just one of the templates provided by your software. Look for the list of provided templates once, by opening one by one, and you will learn how many templates are there, which can be used later as per the specific needs.
Create your own templates: You can also create your own templates and save it for future use. I remember that in our office, we were frequently writing to our headquarters. I saw that my typist was used to open a new file every time and start typing from the first line. In fact, every letter has something in common like name & address of the office at the top, then file number and date, then the name & address of the recipient, then Sir/ Madam, then subject, then text of the letter and in the end, yours faithfully and name & designation of the author of the letter. Out of these, only subject and text of the letter had to be different in different letters and remaining portions were common. I copied an old letter and removed subject and body of the text of the letter and saved it as a template by using ‘Word Template’ command under ‘Save As’ menu and gave it the title ‘Blank Letter to HQ’. Now, whenever a new letter to headquarters had to be typed, this template was clicked and input was typed in the letter and then the Word file was saved with a different name given to this new letter, so that the basic template remains intact. A onetime exercise of only 5 minutes saved many hours later on.
Use keyboard shortcuts: Learn to use keyboard shortcuts. In the age of mouse, most people have forgotten to use keyboard shortcuts. No doubt mouse is easy to use but there are lots of keyboard shortcuts, which save time. Windows and Mac both provide guides of regular keyboard shortcuts, which can be practised.
(Since past few articles, I shared special tips for students. From the next article, our journey will move towards the hottest topic of this century – Time Management. I believe that you are enjoying the journey towards the future of your dreams with me. If yes, please stay tuned. Happy G.O.P.T.A.)
Dr. Sanjay Kumar Agarwal, Creator & copyright holder of the concept G.O.P.T.A.© is an Author, Certified NLP Lifestyle Trainer, Strategic Interventionist, Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker ( http://bit.ly/Signature-Workshops-Sanjay-Kumar-Agarwal ) and recipient of Honorary Doctorate of Excellence (Management) by prestigious Young Scientist University, California, USA. He is Founder of ‘Read, Learn & Earn Movement’ and is popularly known among his fans & followers across the globe as ‘Time and Goal Guru’.
