I’m all about speed. I like to find any way I can to make a task simpler and to get it done quickly, but not at the expense of quality. One tool I have found to be particularly handy for speeding up my work is the text expansion tool, TypeIt4Me. I use it every day at work to shorten certain phrases or snippets that I would normally type out manually. The tool is simple… you can define a shortcut to type and define what you want displayed in it’s place. For example:
I answer customer support questions at CATS Software and often times will want to direct a customer to our pricing page. In the application, TypeIt4Me, I define “cpricing” to be the web address for our pricing page, “http://www.catsone.com/pricing/.” Now whenever I type the shortcut, “cpricing” in my customer support chat or email program, etc, the text is replaced with the long web address automatically.
There are so many uses for this tool, I bet you could come up with some creative ways to use it in your own workflow. I’ve tried one or two other text expanders but have found this one to be the best for features offered and functionality. You can define as many shortcuts as you want, plus some dynamic ones, such as current date or time as well as images.