Making a video seemed like the fastest way of explaining what I meant. Normally continental knitters hold the yarn in their left hand. Today it occurred to me that when you're knitting backwards, you could switch to holding the yarn on your right hand, which means you make the same movement for knitting and purling, which I find much easier.
It has limited utility for things like ribbing--knitting a stitch while knitting backwards is just as annoying as purling a stitch when knitting forwards--but it's very useful for things like shawls and sweaters.
