Comment by bluGill
4 months ago
Reaching for the mouse doesn't break my flow. It makes the thing I was doing invisible in the flow. Keyboard shortcuts require me to think, which makes it FEEL like I'm doing something, and that something is in the flow so it feels like I'm productive. However the mouse doesn't even enter into the flow at all, I just do the thing and get on with the real work without breaking flow.
Again, there is no universal correct answer. Sometimes the keyboard really is better. However sometimes the mouse really is better and because I'm proficient in it I don't break my flow to use it.
I have an anecdote to contribute.
I been doing a lot of Bender. Keyboard on left hand and Mouse on right. The keyboard shortcuts in Blender are excellent, but there are _many_.
I know this sounds silly, but what really breaks my flow is moving my mouse from the middle of the screen where my model is, to the top of the screen where the menus is.
I bought a Stream Deck which is a programmable keyboard with 32 buttons and a screen behind them. I've programmed my most common commands there, so I can just reach across with a finger and smash a button rather than move the mouse away from the center of the screen.
It saves about 1 second, but really makes a huge difference.
I use blender a lot too. I bind space to search and then use that instead of shortcuts for pretty much everything that isn't the few shortcuts I've memorised (and g/s/r xyz etc)