Discovered that keyboard-only design saves me 40 minutes a day

I timed myself last week doing my usual mockup work in Figma with the mouse, then tried doing the same tasks using only keyboard shortcuts. Turns out I saved about 40 minutes across a full workday, mostly from not reaching for the mouse every few seconds. I found a list of hidden shortcuts on a blog called Designer Hacks that I'd never seen before, like shift+1 through shift+6 for zoom levels. The big one was holding spacebar to pan while dragging with the mouse, which cut my navigation time way down. Has anyone else measured how much time they save by going keyboard-only for a full day?

1 comments

1 Comment

roberts.diana14d ago

Oh man, the spacebar pan thing is a game changer right? I did a similar thing a few months back and found that I was wasting so much time just moving my hand back and forth. The shift+number zoom shortcuts you mentioned are clutch. I also use tab to jump between layers and ctrl+shift+v to paste in place which saves me from having to realign stuff constantly. I haven't timed a full day but I tracked a 2 hour block and cut out almost 15 minutes just from those basic moves. The big time sink for me was switching tools with the mouse when I could just hit V for move or R for rectangle without looking.