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The five changes behind the original first-person headline aren’t specified, so this article won’t pretend they’re an author’s personal routine. Instead, here are five small, documented workflow adjustments to consider: use editor commands and shortcuts, edit repeated text with multiple cursors, improve navigation, bring source control closer to your code, and make running, debugging, and testing part of one loop. Whether any of them makes your work feel smoother depends on your editor, project, and habits.

1. Use the editor’s command palette for less familiar actions

When you know what you want to do but not where a command lives in the menus, a command palette can reduce the hunt. In Visual Studio Code, open the Command Palette and search for the action by name. Microsoft’s VS Code tips and tricks documentation covers the palette alongside editing, navigation, source control, debugging, and keyboard shortcuts.

This is most useful for commands you use occasionally and don’t want to memorize. For frequent actions, a keyboard shortcut may be more direct; for a one-off task, searching the palette may be simpler than learning another shortcut.

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2. Learn shortcuts for actions you repeat

A shortcut is worthwhile when you use the same command often enough that reaching for a menu becomes a recurring interruption. Start with a small number of actions that are already part of your routine, such as opening a file or invoking a common editor command. VS Code’s documentation includes shortcut tips, but shortcut availability and key combinations vary by editor and operating system.

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Don’t try to memorize a large catalog at once. A shortcut that you rarely use can be harder to recall than a menu command, and conflicting key bindings can make a familiar combination behave differently in another setup.

3. Use multiple cursors for repeated edits

If several lines need the same small change, multiple cursors can let you edit those locations together instead of repeating the same keystrokes. VS Code documents multi-cursor editing as an editor feature. It is a good fit for regular, visible patterns; it is less suitable when the matches are irregular or when a broad replacement could alter unintended text.

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Check the affected lines before committing the change. For a large or pattern-based transformation, a carefully scoped search-and-replace or a project-specific script may be easier to verify.

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4. Navigate with editor features instead of retracing your steps

Navigation features can help when you are moving between related code rather than editing one file from top to bottom. VS Code’s tips documentation includes navigation guidance. Apple’s Xcode documentation also describes code completion, snippets, navigation, and refactoring in its guide to editing source files. These examples show that similar aids exist in more than one development environment, though exact features depend on the editor and project setup.

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Try the navigation feature that addresses a real recurring detour—such as finding a declaration or returning to a file you just visited. If a feature adds more steps than it saves for your kind of project, there is no need to adopt it.

5. Keep validation close to the edit

Running, debugging, and testing from the same workbench can make it easier to move from a code change to checking its behavior. Microsoft describes VS Code as bringing editing, terminal, source control, debugging, and testing into a shared workbench, and says that “running, debugging, and testing form a continuous loop as you make changes” in its core editor features documentation.

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That is a description of the tool’s workflow, not evidence of a guaranteed productivity gain. Use the loop that fits your project: make a focused change, run the relevant check, inspect any failure, and adjust. How much of that happens inside the editor depends on your language, project, and development tools.

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Choose changes by the friction they remove

Visual Studio Code does not prescribe a programming language, operating system, or set of development tools, according to its documentation. The features above are examples, not requirements, and comparable capabilities may be available in other editors. Pick one recurring annoyance, try the smallest relevant adjustment, and keep it only if it fits your actual work.

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The cited editor documentation describes features and intended workflows; it does not establish that these changes produce a measured improvement in coding speed or productivity. A smoother workflow is a personal outcome, not a result these sources quantify.

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