Question: I often find myself changing text colors to the same color for five minutes at a time which is really unnecessarily mouse-intensive.

Answer: 
Here are the steps:

1. Press `Alt` + `/`
2. Type the color (eg. blue, red etc)
3. Hit `Enter`

`Alt` + `/` is like a command palette for all available commands. It's in `Help` menu.
1. Copy the cell that has the formatting that you need (Ctrl+C)
2. Paste format only on top of the cell(s) that you want to be formatted the same way (Ctrl+Alt+V)