While working together on a project, I made the comment "When are you going to learn to be productive" to a good friend of mine. He didn't appreciate that much, and I don't blame him. I don't remember the exact exchange, but I was working at his laptop showing him something. I seem to remember right-clicking and looking for a "Send to TextPad" option or some equivalent. One could argue "having to execute more than two clicks to open a text file" is an acceptable definition for unproductive.
The future holds all kinds of possibilities like voice and gesture recognition technologies - ah la the Minority Report.
But today we've got a mouse and a keyboard. My strong preference would be to never take my hands off the keyboard. I can type as fast as anyone should be communicating with anything. I have a well honed system for going to war with my PC - Desktop Jujitsu. If done correctly it's not flighting at all - rather a harmonious dance. I'm a freak for efficiency and I'm all about minimizing the number of clicks, keystrokes, and evil context switches (i.e. going from keyboard to mouse, or vice versa).
I'm going to start laying out how I dance with my PC... my rig if you will. When I was growing up I used to flip to the back of each issue of Guitar For The Practicing Musician to see photos of my favorite guitar player's "rig"... the gear they use to their sound.
I would try to duplicate their stuff and their subtle tricks. I would usually learn something and become a slightly better guitar player. I enjoy reading about other folks tips/tricks/tools:
I'll be posting about the tools and techniques I've found that work well for me. Maybe it will help my friend improve his rig and finally get productive.