DESATURATION USING PSP8

I was making some icons the other night, and I had to desaturate a layer, so it would be black and white. What I was following was for PS, and it just said "Desaturate the layer". I'm not sure if there's a simpler way to do it, but I did it this way.....I took the layer, and made it greyscale, copied that layer, went to undo so everything went back to color, then pasted that greyscaled image as a new layer, then went on with my icon. So is there a simpler way of doing that, or is that pretty much what I'll need to do all the time?