TSPY

I’m going to call it Time Saved Per Year or TSPY. It is a measurement of the amount of time (measured in hours) that is saved in one year by using a more efficient technique to accomplish a routine task.

Using yesterday’s – Windows Key – Down Arrow – Enter shortcut to a browser, I did an experiment in the lab with users running two normal applications: Word and Outlook. One group had to reduce the two applications using the mouse and double-click the “e” on the desktop. The second group used only the keyboard shortcut. The average time savings per browser opening (ATSPBO) was four seconds.

If this activity is initiated ten times during a normal working day, the numbers look like this.

10×4=40 seconds per day
40×5=200 seconds per week
200×52=10,400 seconds per year
=173.3 minutes per year
=2.89 hours per year

Yesterday’s TSPY was 2.89 hours.

That is more than one third of a teaching day. It is time that could be used interacting with students or completing administrative tasks that would otherwise have been done in the evening at home.