[unusually half-finished WIP]
This xkcd is pretty funny:
Hotkeys are a great example of this — because although they can take 5-10 minutes to set up and another 10-15 minutes distributed over a few days to get comfortable, it’ll probably save you a whole ~30 seconds over the course of a year.
However:
When paths become easier to take, you take them more easily. From dynomight:
For years, I thought I should vacuum. But since vacuuming wasn’t fun, I only rarely did it after making a desperate effort and mostly my vacuum served as a monument to what a failed and pathetic human being I was.
And then, on one beautiful day, I was borrowing the apartment of a friend who was out of town. I thought I should clean before I left and discovered she had a cordless, battery-powered vacuum. As I switched it on, clouds parted and trumpets sang from the sky. It wasn’t quite as powerful as a normal vacuum, but it was painless. After I bought one, I was suddenly able to vacuum whenever I wanted, like a real person, so easily that the entire issue lost salience when I was in the mood for self-loathing.
Lesson: Sometimes you want to make the intended path (vacuuming) better rather than changing anything about the desire path (not vacuuming).
Setting up hotkeys also makes it easier to do those things — which can make it more likely you do the actions associated with those hotkeys.