Flow and cognitive bumps

Focusing for extended periods of time is hard. It’s even harder if your window manager insists that, in order to switch context, you absolutely have to break contact with your keyboard, pick up a mouse and click, doubleclick or drag the context you want into the desired window.

Maybe you’ve thought about this in the past or maybe you haven’t thought about it at all. Using a mouse has been the accepted way of controlling the computer for a very long time now - but reaching from the keyboard to the mouse is a cognitive hiccup. A little bump in the road of our workflow. A small timeframe in which we have to relinquish control of our current control-device, the keyboard, move to our mouse and manipulate that in some way, after which we have to relinquish control of the mouse again - just to go back to the keyboard. In order to smooth out that cognitive bump, it just makes sense to just keep using the keyboard for our most used tasks. And, later on, maybe even for tasks we don’t use as much.

Where to start

After watching customers, colleagues, teachers and friends one thing has become clear to me; the more you use a computer, the more you’re inclined to use the keyboard for tasks within your workflow. If you’re the average windows user, maybe you’ll start with using Ctrl+c to copy and Ctrl+v to paste. Or maybe you’ll Alt-Tab to switch applications.

Taking this a bit further; maybe you use Ctrl+s to save, Alt+F4 to quit the application and Ctrl+p to print. Or just maybe you’re one of those “Microsoft office ninja’s” who can work in Word and Excel with an almost magical speed.

The common denominator? Keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard shortcuts which are memorized and used so much they’ve become part of the workflow - keys which are pressed without even thinking about it. Zero cognitive load, zero noise. No bump in the workflow.

The first step is identifying the programs you use most, and the actions you perform in them. And see if there are keyboard shortcuts associated with those actions. If there are, write them down somewhere and practice them every day.

If you do this, then within a couple of days you’ll already be a bit speedier in those applications you work with. After a couple of months I’m pretty sure there are some obscure shortcuts you know that most people don’t. And if you continue this learning process for a couple of years, then you’ll quickly become a ninja at what you do.

The cognitive bump

When you’re in your workflow, everything that makes you stop and ‘switch context’ is a cognitive bump. I migrated to a tiling window manager quite a while ago to remove the cognitive bump of managing screen realestate with my mouse. Recognizing those cognitive bumps can be quite hard, but removing them will enable you to stay ‘in the flow’ of what you’re doing for much longer. So ask yourself this question constantly; ‘what sequence of events preceded me losing my flow?’. Reflect on your findings, and eliminate any noise/cognitive bumps.