I didn’t feel much like working on an Irreal post today so I procrastinated by surfing over to Lifehacker and wasting some time there. Besides the sometimes helpful tips on handling some of life’s chores, they have a section called How I Work that features an interview with a well-known or interesting person about (basically) their workflow.

A recent interview was with Courtney Napoles, a computer scientist who heads Grammarly’s Language Data team. She has an interesting background that includes working as a book editor before she decided to switch gears and get her doctorate in Computer Science. That’s sort of interesting but why would the average Irreal reader care?

It turns out that Napoles, like many of us, is a dedicated Emacs user, of which she says, she would be almost paralyzed at work without. Like me, she uses it for everything: for work, for keeping her and her child’s schedule, notes, TODO lists, shopping lists and just about every other text related thing.

The other thing that struck me was her answer to the question “What’s your favorite shortcut or hack?” She mentions two things sure to strike a chord with hardcore Emacsers. She says that she avoids using the mouse as much as she can and tries to do everything from the keyboard. Along with that, she has a large set of keyboard shortcuts so that she can avoid clicking on an icon to start an app. I never considered that I was a big keyboard shortcut user but after reading the interview, I realized that I use shortcuts the same way she does. I have function keys programmed to start all of my usual applications and to do things like open an Org-mode capture template recording the current URL when I’m in the browser. It’s amazing how much time and effort you can save just by making a few such shortcuts.

If you’re looking for a way to avoid doing what you’re supposed to be doing—or even if you’d simply like to read an interesting interview—head over to Lifehacker and take a look. The two interviews after Napoles’ are with Kirsten Vangsness of Criminal Minds and Will Shortz, the New York Times Crossword Puzzle editor. There’s something for everyone.