The problem with keyboard shortcuts nobody talks about
Keyboard shortcuts are genuinely faster than using a mouse. Studies have shown that switching between mouse and keyboard constantly costs real time, and power users who rely on shortcuts get things done measurably faster.
So why do most people only use a small handful of them?
It is not laziness. It is memory.
The real problem
Every app on your Mac has dozens of keyboard shortcuts. Photoshop has hundreds. Your browser, your email, your design tools. Each one has its own set of key combinations, and most of them are different from app to app.
The ones you use every single day become automatic. The ones you use occasionally require you to stop and think. The ones you use rarely, you simply forget. So you end up clicking through menus instead, not because the shortcut would not save you time, but because you cannot remember what it is.
This is not a personal failing. Nobody can keep hundreds of key combinations in their head across every app they use.
What actually fixes it
The fix is not to study harder or make flashcards. It is to stop requiring memory at all.
Put your shortcuts in a visual pie menu at your cursor. Press a hotkey and the menu appears. Each item is labeled with the action name. Click the one you want and the shortcut fires instantly in whatever app you are using, exactly as if you had pressed the key combination yourself.
You get all the speed of keyboard shortcuts without needing to remember a single one.
And then something interesting happens
Because each shortcut always sits in the same spot in the circle, your hands start to learn the positions over time. You stop reading the labels and just point. At that stage, using the menu is just as fast as knowing the shortcut by heart, and for some actions even faster.
You never have to sit down and memorize anything. The habit builds itself through use.
This is what we built
Radial's keyboard shortcut system lets you set up a different menu for each app, with the shortcuts you actually reach for. One hotkey. Everything visible. No memorization on day one, and real speed as the habit develops.