Remote work runs almost entirely on text — Slack messages, emails, docs, tickets, async updates. Small typing inefficiencies that wouldn't matter for one message add up to real hours over a year. Here are ten habits worth building.
1. Build a shortcut library for repeated phrases
If you find yourself typing the same sentence more than three times a week, it should be a text-expander shortcut, not muscle memory. Standup updates, meeting recap templates, and common Slack replies are the easiest wins.
2. Automate grammar correction instead of manual proofreading
Manually rereading every message before sending costs seconds each time, and you'll still miss things your own brain autocorrects. A one-click correction tool catches more, faster.
3. Keep a canned-response doc for recurring questions
Even before turning things into shortcuts, keep a running doc of your best-written answers to common questions. It's the raw material for shortcuts later, and useful on its own.
4. Use your OS's built-in snippet tools as a fallback
Windows and macOS both have basic text-replacement settings buried in their keyboard preferences. They're limited (no cross-browser sync, clunky management) but free and worth knowing about for very short snippets.
5. Template your meeting notes format
A shortcut that expands into your standard meeting-notes skeleton (Attendees / Decisions / Action items) means you start every meeting doc from a consistent structure instead of a blank page.
6. Write async updates in a fixed structure
Teams that standardize on a simple structure for daily/weekly updates (What I did / What's next / Blockers) write them faster and read them faster — structure removes the "how do I phrase this" hesitation.
7. Save your most-used links as shortcuts, not bookmarks
Booking links, doc templates, and shared folder URLs are painful to dig up mid-conversation. A shortcut that expands straight to the link is faster than switching tabs to find it.
8. Batch your typo-fixing instead of correcting mid-sentence
Stopping to backspace a typo mid-thought breaks your train of thought more than the typo itself costs. Finish the sentence, then run a single correction pass.
Spellro combines one-click grammar correction and a shortcut expander in a single free extension.
Add to Chrome9. Keep an emoji/formatting cheat-sheet as shortcuts
If your team uses specific status emoji or formatting conventions in Slack, a shortcut is faster to type consistently than remembering the exact emoji shortcode every time.
10. Review and prune your shortcuts every few months
Shortcuts you set up once and never use just add clutter. A quick quarterly review — delete what you don't use, add what you've been retyping — keeps the system actually useful instead of becoming its own chore.