Their findings hit on a major point of human-computer psychology: pure timing tests consistently showed using a mouse was faster than keyboarding, but users just as consistently swore that their keyboard efforts were faster.

By 1989, Apple's Human Interface Group had spent at least $50 million timing and questioning users as they moved through applications using both keyboards and mice. On the first morning of my self-imposed pointer exile, I stumble across an old research report that casts serious doubt on whether keyboard shortcuts mouse will save a user bits of micro-time that add up to real productivity. ITworld user okyea_YahZN63SD | What's your take? Not buying itI watch numerous times a day as colleagues take their hands from the keyboard, reach for the mouse, and either (1) click in the next field of a form and recommence typing, or (2) click 'Submit.' It'd take a lot more than $50 mil worth of research to convince me that (1) tab and (2) enter are not faster. I learned which sites and apps were looking out for my fingers' best interest, came to pity those that got it all wrong, and discovered that some of my assumptions about our good friend QWERTY were wrong. I scanned endless 'Help' documents, searched Google to fill in the blanks, and took blind guesses when all else failed.

Over the course of a week, I forbade myself from reaching for a mouse or trackpad to do anything on a computer, without at least looking to see if a keyboard shortcut was available to do the same thing. Such is the sharp vacillation that is trying to live a keyboard-only life, or at least a keyboard-whenever-possible experiment (touch-based smartphones were a notable exception).

Groove music keyboard shortcuts