Spotlight shortcut not working within an app(s) anymore
Have you tried changing your Spotlight shortcuts? You can set the spotlight shortcuts (or any others) to whatever feels good for you. 

Apple menu &gt; System Preferences &gt; Keyboard &gt; Shortcuts &gt; Spotlight


Click the shortcut you want to change, then tap the new shortcut keys on your keyboard.

A quicker way to launch commonly used applications would be to set a shortcut to launch a specific app. to do this, create an automator script to launch the application then set a shortcut to run the script. Here's a tutorial that explains how to do it. 
https://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-launch-any-app-with-a-keyboard-shortcut--mac-31463