You know what doesn’t work for me? Wasting my time.
I hate going to the dentist and waiting an hour…after I’ve made sure to get my booty there on time.
I love doing two things at once. Watching doing research on Food Network while working on my laptop. Making my bed while calling my sister. Walking during my son’s soccer practice.
I hate sitting in traffic.
I love crossing things off my to do list because it means I’ve been productive.
I hate telemarketing calls, junk mail and spam mail. Wasters. Of. Time.
But I love a nifty little thing called TextExpander, a customizable abbreviation Mac app.
You know when you’re blogging and you type your blog URL 13,000 times a day? It gets a little old, doesn’t it?
h.t.t.p.:././.w…w…w…t.h.e.p.i.x.e.l.b.o.u.t.i.q.u.e…c…o…m.
That’s a mouthful.
A friend told me about TextExpander and how you create shortcuts or abbreviations for those common words, phrases, heck…paragraphs you type over and over. So rather than typing:
http://www.thepixelboutique.com
I simply type
tpb
I pick the abbreviation, for as many things as I want and TextExpander does the rest.
I LOVE it!
TextExpander even tells you how much time you have saved using the application. In the two months I’ve been using it, I’ve typed 69,026 less characters and saved 2.88 hours. Sa-weet!
It cost $29.95 and you can download a free trial to see if its something you really want. But I can tell you right now…you want this. If your time is worth anything, you’ll pay for it in the first hour it saves you.
For more tips, visit Works For Me Wednesday!
Is this a mac only thing? Or will it work for us PC users too?
Wow!! I am a Mac user, and I am so glad to learn about this! I don’t need the trial…I KNOW I want it. Thanks for the tip!!
Thanks for the tip. What a cute blog!! I’ll be back!
Hi Sharon,
TextExpander is only a Mac application, but I found a few for the PC…
http://keystroke-expander.qarchive.org/
Hi Sharon,
Jean from SmileOnMyMac here. We make Mac software only, but so many people ask what’s the equivalent of TextExpander for the PC, that I know the answer: Texter. It was developed by Lifehacker specifically to fill this gap.
http://lifehacker.com/5164933/use-texter-to-supercharge-your-repetitive-typing
Thanks for the TextExpander mention, Pixel Boutique!
I hate wasting time too. It’s one of the only things that really frustrates me.
For example, we recently took our daughter to the pediatrician for her 2-month check-up and we were there for almost two hours! But we only saw the doctor for about 5 minutes! I just about went crazy waiting there.
leave it to apple to come up with something genius like that!
[...] You may remember…I talked about the TextExpander app I still use on a daily basis to save a bazillion minutes a day. You can read all about it here. [...]