Home Office Setup & Equipment

Your personal productivity may be dependent on your unique needs, personality, and circumstances, but there are still general “laws” governing time management and potential output that apply to pretty much everyone—like, actual "laws" named after the people who came up with them. Economists, philosophers, and scientists have spent a lot of their own time researching what practices make a person more productive. Here’s an overview of the rules all that research has given us. The Yerkes-Dodson Law The Yerkes-Dodson Law says a person is most productive when they have just the right amount of stress pushing them—not too much and not too little. It models the relationship be…

When it comes to productivity hacks, there are two things I love: the tried-and-true classics, like the Pomodoro method, and shaking them up with a few customizations. I've written before about other ways to mold Pomodoro to match what you need, but today's idea, Pomodoro 2.0, is one of the easiest and most effective adaptations. What do I mean by "Pomodoro 2.0?" First, a refresher on what the Pomodoro technique even is. When you're using this technique to focus and be productive, you set an alarm for 25 minutes, work for that time, then take a five-minute break. You complete that cycle four times, then give yourself a longer break at the end, up to half an hour, before…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan's new series Pluribus has earned a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes. It's just an excellent show, featuring an end-of-the-world science fiction story with a wildly inventive apocalypse: instead of zombies or nuclear bombs, Pluribus' world ends with humanity literally coming together. Through a transmission from space, everyone on Earth is melded into a single consciousness, so there's no more conflict or hunger, but there's no more individuality, either. Mysteriously, a handful of people were left out of the great melting, including Carol (Rhea Seehorn) a cynical, hard-drinking writer …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. AirPods can fall short if you swap between different devices or want more than a single color option. That is where the currently discounted Bose QuietComfort Earbuds start to feel like a practical alternative. They’re sitting at $129 right now, which price trackers confirm as their lowest price so far and a noticeable drop from their usual $179. You also get more color options than normal, with black and white sitting alongside two limited shades, petal pink and twilight blue. And while Bose sells a higher-end QuietComfort Ultra model for $229 (d…

There are plenty of distractions to deal with in our modern digital age—see if you can manage to get all the way through this article without turning your attention elsewhere at least once, for example. All that surrounding noise can make it difficult to stick to the task at hand, and actually get some solid work done. I enjoy browsing social media and exploring the web as much as the next person, but I've also got plenty of writing to get through every day, and distractions can seriously slow me down. Studies have shown that we do much better when we focus on one task at a time, which for me is writing guides and articles. While distraction-free devices such as the Freew…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Giving the gift of tools can be tricky, because the person you’re buying for might have specific preferences and needs. Knowing the type of thing that a handy person likes to do—such as woodworking or car maintenance—can get you started, but you can also take a peep at the tools they already have. Accounting for what cordless battery system they already own and what brand of hand tools they use can help guide your choice when picking out a tool to gift—the key to choosing the right cordless tool for a DIY enthusiast is figuring out what battery system they already have. Once you know that, you can look for tools and batt…

Want to block ads on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad? wBlock is quickly becoming my favorite solution: it's free, open source, fast, and customizable. Ad blocking is in a weird place. Google, the company that makes more money from advertising than any other on Earth, is actively working to make ad blockers worse on Chrome while it also makes it harder to block ads on YouTube. Basically, it's a good time to not use Chrome. So it's nice that Apple users have another choice: Safari. And, as luck would have it, Safari has an extremely efficient API for ad blocking built right in. The ad blocker wBlock uses this, and the result is ads are blocked in a way that doesn't slow down your…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Black Friday sales officially start Friday, November 28, and run through Cyber Monday, December 1, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it's over. Follow our live blog to stay up-to-date on the best sales we find. Browse our editors’ picks for a curated list of our favorite sales on laptops, fitness tech, appliances, and more. Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Black Friday sales officially start Friday, November 28, and run through Cyber Monday, December 1, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it's over. Follow our live blog to stay up-to-date on the best sales we find. Browse our editors' picks for a curated list of our favorite sales on laptops, fitness tech, appliances, and more. Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices an…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Black Friday sales officially start Friday, November 28, and run through Cyber Monday, December 1, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it's over. Follow our live blog to stay up-to-date on the best sales we find. Browse our editors’ picks for a curated list of our favorite sales on laptops, fitness tech, appliances, and more. Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Black Friday sales officially start Friday, November 28, and run through Cyber Monday, December 1, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools before it's over. Follow our live blog to stay up-to-date on the best sales we find. Browse our editors’ picks for a curated list of our favorite sales on laptops, fitness tech, appliances, and more. Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices an…

AI is everywhere! Writing essays, editing photos, producing social-media slop, doing your browsing for you, making plenty of mistakes—and now, if you've installed the latest Android 16 update (currently rolling out to Pixel phones), summarizing your notifications so you have less text and fewer alerts to wade through. The new summarization feature, as per Google, will "help you cut through the clutter and stay focused," and give you "quick understanding and context at a glance." I'm all for cutting through the clutter, so as soon as the update landed on my own Pixel device, I decided to enable the feature and see how useful it really is. How AI summaries work, and how to …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Meta Quest Pro launched as Meta’s vision of what high-end virtual and mixed reality could look like without dragging a gaming PC into the equation. At $679.99 on Woot, it’s now $320 off its original $999 price and still more than $100 cheaper than Amazon at the time of writing. This deal runs for six days or until it sells out, with free standard shipping for Prime members and a $6 fee for everyone else. This headset won PCMag’s Best VR Headset award in 2022, and while it’s no longer the newest thing Meta sells, it’s still positioned well above…

Dedicated runners and winter athletes will tell you that exercising in the cold is not as tough as it looks. Personally, I'd rather risk frostbite over any treadmill run that lasts longer than 20 minutes. But is there a point where winter runs cross over from difficult to dangerous? There is no clear cut-offMost experts suggest that the danger zone begins around -18°F (-28° Celcius), particularly when factoring in wind chill. At these extreme temperatures, the risk of frostbite increases dramatically, and breathing frigid air can become uncomfortable or even harmful to your lungs and airways. But beyond the raw temperature, certain conditions should prompt you to choose …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Mini LED tech has finally filtered down to more mainstream big-screen TVs, but the pricing jumps fast once you start looking at premium brands and larger screen sizes—that’s why the current price on Sony’s 85-inch Bravia 5 stands out. It’s selling for $1,698 on Amazon (down from $2,399.99) which is the lowest it’s been so far, according to price trackers. At this size, that discount meaningfully shifts the math, especially if you’re after a large screen from a brand known for dependable processing and a polished smart TV experience, rather than cha…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Things seemed very quiet this week in the world of youth culture, so I asked my always-connected son what kids were talking about. "Dad, the Epstein files," he said. "That's all anyone is talking about." I like to keep things light here, but it's not possible at the moment; The Epstein files are the culture right now, no matter what age you are. Younger people are trying to figure out how to fit this massive thing into their idea of the world, just like you probably are. Smaller kids are contextualizing the files by visiting/making Roblox Epstein Islands and joking about it in school (then asking their folks what it real…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Sony HT-Z9F is down to $419.99 on Woot, a steep drop from its original price of $899.99. At this price, it becomes a far more accessible way to upgrade your TV audio without committing to a full AV receiver and multi-speaker setup. The deal is available for the next 16 days or until it sells out, whichever happens first. Prime members receive free standard shipping, while non-Prime customers pay $6. That said, shipping is not available to Alaska, Hawaii, APO addresses, or PO Boxes, and the purchase includes a 90-day Woot limited warranty. Disc…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. When the Qrevo Curv 2 Flow Robot Vacuum and Mop was released in early 2026 as an upgrade to the original Qrevo Curv, it was dubbed one of the longest-lasting and most powerful automatic cleaners on the market—but it also came at a high price. For those who want similar performance at a more budget-friendly price than the flagship release, the Qrevo Curv S5X Robot Vacuum and Mop is a reliable option that’s now more affordable than ever at $649.99 (originally $1,149.99), marking a 43% drop to its lowest price yet. …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Amazon’s Spring Sale is set to kick off later this week, but some early discounts are already live. One worth paying attention to is the Insta360 X5 Essentials Bundle. Currently listed at $559.99 (originally $659.99), this is the lowest this bundle has ever reached, according to price trackers. It’s also worth noting that PCMag gave the X5 an “outstanding” rating and named it the best action camera of 2025. That context makes the $100 discount feel more meaningful, especially since this bundle already includes most of what you need to get started,…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The deals from Amazon's Big Spring Sale have been surprisingly good so far, even though the sale is not supposed to start until this Wednesday, March 25. As is the case with other big Amazon sales, I'm going to make your life a little easier and highlight all the deals as our team covers them. All of our recommended deals have been vetted using price-tracking tools, so you can trust that the sales we're talking about are actually good deals, and not just hype designed to fool you. You can read more details about the spring sale here, like what to ex…

Spotify keeps adding new features lately. Last week, the company rolled out "Exclusive Mode" for desktop users to stream in the highest quality possible; last month, Spotify announced "Smart Reorder," which automatically sorts your songs by BPM; and in January, the company's AI-powered "Prompted Playlists" landed in the U.S. after an exclusive stint overseas. It's still not easy to pick a favorite among other services like Apple Music, but Premium subscribers can at least say Spotify is giving them something for their money. Now, the company is rolling out another new feature, one that actually seems like a cool way to learn about your music. On Tuesday, Spotify anno…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Running is one of the simplest workouts a person can do—and unless you have plans on opening up a professional-grade gym, there's probably no need for you to blow thousands of dollars on a fancy treadmill. Today, one of the best budget treadmills, the NordicTrack T Series 5, is on sale for $479. That's a 20% markdown from its typical price of $599, all thanks to Amazon's Big Spring Sale. NordicTrack T Series 5 …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Sleep scores may be one of the most-checked metrics in wearable health tracking, but the companies behind them haven't agreed on a shared language. A Garmin wearer with a 75 is in "Fair" territory. An Oura wearer with a 75 is doing "Good." An Apple Watch user with a 75 might see "OK" or "High" depending on which software version they're running. Where are these numbers coming from, and what are they actually telling you? Each platform uses different scales, labels, and underlying signals to arrive at that single morning number. Here's a breakdown of how the most popular wearables calculate your "sleep score," and what tha…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. The second-generation Arlo Video Doorbell is currently down to $59.99 on Amazon, a big drop from its usual $129.99 price and the lowest it’s ever been, according to price trackers. Arlo Video Doorbell 2nd Generation …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source. Garmin’s newest watch is an update to its Venu line. The Venu 3 was one of the brand’s best lifestyle watches, and the Venu X1, launched earlier this year, was a premium version. Now, there is a Venu 4, available on September 22—and it has a flashlight. Pricing and essential featuresThe Venu 4 comes in two sizes (41 and 45 millimeters), the same as the sizes of the Venu 3 and 3S respectively. It costs $100 more than the older version, with the Venu 4 coming i…