Home Office Setup & Equipment

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. When you updated your iPhone to iOS 26, you were probably expecting to try out a bunch of new features. Maybe you were excited to see the new Liquid Glass design, or interested to see how the new spam prevention tech works. But if you opened Messages to send a text after updating, you might have run into a frustrating problem: All of a sudden, you aren't able to activate iMessage with your phone number. It's not clear how widespread the problem is at this time, but it seems to be a big enough issue for Appl…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Amazon Big Deal Days is coming October 7-8, 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. Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox. New to Prime Day? We have a primer on everything you need to know. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices and inventory are always subject to change. October’s Prime sales have already begun, including deals on f…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Amazon Big Deal Days is October 7-8, 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. Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox. New to Prime Day? We have a primer on everything you need to know. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices and inventory are always subject to change. There are tons of big-ticket items for less on sale right now. But if…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Amazon Big Deal Days is October 7-8, and Lifehacker is sharing the best bargains, based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools. Follow our live blog to stay up to date on the best sales we find. Subscribe to our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart, for the best sales sent to your inbox. New to Prime Day? We have a primer on everything you need to know. Sales are accurate at the time of publication, but prices and inventory are always subject to change. If you send a lot of packages, you know it's a tedious process. Whether you own a …

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. If you’ve been eyeing a big-screen upgrade but waiting for the prices to make sense, this might be the moment. The 77-inch LG C5 OLED Evo TV has dropped to $2,150, down from nearly $3,700, which is wild considering it’s only a few months into its release. Sitting just below LG’s flagship G5, the C5 borrows much of the same tech without the gallery-design markup. Reviewers, including…

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 Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. I love going to a reformer Pilates studio for a (pricey) workout but I also love staying home to work out on my own. In the end, it just depends on my mood. Good news for people like me: Tonal is rolling out reformer-style Pilates with its new update. If you have the at-home weight training device or are considering getting one, this could be major for you. Even if you're not someone who wakes up on a Saturday morning excited to go trade $65 for 45 minute…

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. Apple officially entered its M5 era on Wednesday. The company not only announced the new M5 chip, placing a major emphasis on its AI processing power, but also the first batch of new devices that will ship alongside it. If you're interested in buying an Apple device with the company's latest and greatest hardware, it's all just around the corner. That said, the list of product announcements was limited. While Apple revealed M5 versions of the iPad Pro and Vision Pro will be available starting on Oct. 22, it…

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 Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news. Whether you’re a fan of listening to music while you read or you simply live in a household of noisy people, silence may not be something you’re used to finding before hitting the books—but it should be and it can be. Despite the boom in popularity of study-based playlists on YouTube and Spotify, quiet is the way to go when you’re trying to retain information you’re taking in. Don’t take my word for; take science’s. What the research says First, research p…

Mind-mapping is beneficial for productivity in your daily tasks, but it’s also a technique that is widely used for studying. A mind map isn’t just a diagram that lays out tasks, but a visualization of how ideas connect to one another. Once you see the core concepts represented with shapes and their connections represented with lines, you can better understand your material overall, especially if you're more of a visual learner. Here’s what you need to know when using a mind map for studying and how to make the creation of one a lot easier. What is the benefit of a mind map for studying?A mind map helps you generate ideas based on their association to other concepts, plus …

Over the past few months, I felt overwhelmed by all the changes going on in my life—and the things I need to do because of and for them. I've been providing administrative help to my partner as he opens a new business, managing professional expansions of my own, studying for a certification exam, overseeing renovations to my apartment, and restructuring my finances while still keeping up with my regular jobs and responsibilities. For a while, I was waking up tired before the day even started despite the fact that most of these boil down to never-ending, tedious, but little tasks like "send that email," "return that phone call," "confirm that account number," and "pick a p…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’ve been eyeing a big-screen upgrade without blowing past your budget, the Vizio 65-inch 4K UHD LED Smart TV (V4K65M-08) might just be the solution you need. It’s currently $348 at Walmart (down from $428)—a solid deal for a name-brand 65-inch TV that supports 4K, Dolby Vision, and HDR10. VIZIO V Series 65" 4K HDR Full Array LED Smart TV (V4K65M-0804) …

Football season is in full swing, but these are such strange days that even of game day, Americans can no longer put their political differences aside to enjoy the savage ballet. Yes, the National Football League has once again become a flashpoint in the endless, maddening culture wars—and surprisingly, the NFL seems to be on the "woke" side of the board. Right now, there's a lot of misinformation being spread about the game, the league, and the personalities within. Here are some of the biggest I've encountered. Did Andy Reid refuse pledge to not attend the 2026 Super Bowl over a planned Charlie Kirk tribute?The questionable Facebook pages of both Kollam's Media and Tog…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’re in the market for a new Windows 11 laptop for everyday use that’s under $150, the bestselling Lenovo IdeaPad 1i 14" Laptop is a smart choice – and right now, it’s $129 (originally $249.99) at Walmart. Lenovo IdeaPad 1i 14" Laptop $129.00 at Walmart $2…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. If you have a lot to do every day, it might be hard to figure out how to prioritize it all. You can try to decide what’s urgent and what isn’t, build a detailed schedule, and use tech to stay focused, but sometimes it’s hard to even know where to start. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you should consider getting familiar with Forster’s Commitment Inventory to sort it all out—especially if you’re a person who likes visual aids to conceptualize your day. What is the commitment inventory?The commitment inventory was thought up by British productivity expert Mark Forster, author of Get Everything Done: And Still Have Time to P…

Much to the chagrin of mundane numbers like 35 and 192, 6-7 has taken over American culture. I assume that young people love 6-7 so much because 67 is the 19th prime number and the atomic weight of holmium, which is essential to samarium-cobalt magnets, but I can't say for sure. I can say 6-7 is everywhere—on TikTok, in memes, and now in the dictionary. And that's only one of the many confusing trends I'm explaining this week. I'll also tell you about Soulja Boy selling smart glasses, the sunglasses on your waist trend, and "Beez in the Trap" (Be-Beez in the trap...) Dictionary.com names "6-7" word of the yearThe Gen-Alpha brainrot slang word 6-7 has been named 2025's W…

I'm always harping about how everyone should familiarize themselves with and start using time boxing and time blocking, the techniques that call on you to pre-plan your entire day down to the minute, filling up every space on your calendar with defined tasks. I stand by my enthusiasm for the methods, but even when you’re time boxing your whole day, you’ll notice you end up with a few random pockets of time sprinkled throughout your schedule. If you don’t have a plan for what to do with these, they’ll become unproductive—so start thinking of how you can maximize your productivity with “time pockets.” What are time pockets?Time pockets are small amounts of time throughout y…

There are myriad ways to prioritize your to-do list, but even if you find one that works for you, you might find they can be a little weedy and overcomplicated. That means when it comes to tasks that don't quite require that level of involvement, your productivity method can actually manage to stress you out. If you're tired of your to-do list feeling like such a heavy lift, you can make simplifying things, well, simpler by prioritizing your tasks with the "must, should, want" technique. What is the “must, should, want” technique This technique was developed by Jay Shirley about a decade ago. The blogger set out to enhance not only people’s productivity, but their dail…

The new version of Fitbit’s app (currently in “public preview” mode) has some improvements and some shortcomings. On the first day it was available, the built-in AI confused and frustrated me, but I figured I needed to give it a little time. Maybe it would learn more about me and give better responses. Maybe I would learn my way around its features. Maybe the team at Google would correct the worst of the problems. That last prediction came partly true. When I woke up the next morning, the AI finally admitted that the watch I was wearing, Google’s Pixel Watch 4, does actually exist. (The initial version of the app had claimed that the Pixel Watch 2, released in 2023, was …

Google's AI Mode has new agentic capabilities for booking event tickets and beauty and wellness appointments, so AI will do most of the work to find and curate the best options based on your inputs. Google first launched agentic capabilities for AI Mode in August: The initial feature could help locate restaurant reservations based on inputs like party size, location, cuisine, and preferred dates and times. For example, you can enter "find me a table for 8 people next Saturday for a birthday dinner ... thinking outdoor rustic garden vibes with live music" and AI Mode will return suggestions with links to book. While they won't actually finalize the reservation for you, Go…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Studies have shown that a decluttered workspace can decrease stress and increase focus—and that stress at work can actually result in more clutter. It's important to clean up your environment so the place you work is comfortable, calm, and sanitary. If you want to get more done, you need to be working in a tidy, welcoming space. Borrow the 5S method to get it done most efficiently. What is the 5S method of workspace cleaning?The 5S method, like Kanban and Kaizen, comes from Japan, where organizational processes developed in factories and were so useful that their use expanded well beyond Toyota and other manufacturers. Th…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you’ve been looking to replace an aging desktop without spending a small fortune, this refurbished 2023 model HP Slim Desktop might be worth considering. It’s on sale for $189.99 on StackSocial, and while that price suggests bare-bones, it’s more suited for everyday computing than you might expect. Since it’s a refurbished “Grade A” model, it should arrive looking nearly new, with minimal signs of previous use. Plus, the one-year parts-and-labor warranty from a third party adds some reassurance. The HP Slim lives up to its name. At approximately …

Having previously been tested as an experimental flag, Google Chrome's Split View feature is now rolling out in the stable version of the browser (version 142). It doesn't seem to be live for everyone at the same time, but some people are seeing it. (I've got it in Chrome on my Mac, but not yet on Windows.) To check you're on the latest version of Chrome, click the three dots (top right) in a browser tab, then choose Settings and About Chrome. If an update is available, it'll be downloaded, and you can restart your browser to apply it. If you're running the latest version of Chrome and still don't see Split View, you can either wait for the feature to reach you or switch…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Amazon announced its Black Friday and Cyber Monday plans this week—although it won't start until Nov. 20, you can already find early Black Friday deals on Amazon devices. Their "like-new" Kindle readers, in particular, have good discounts right now. The Kindle Paperwhite is $106.99 (originally $143.99), the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is $126.99 (originally $179.99), the 16GB Kindle Scribe is $212.99 (originally $309.99), and the 64GB Kindle Scribe is $278.99 (originally $404.99). …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I'm not sure what it says about us that we can't get enough of Ed Gein, of all people. While lacking the type of body count that would put him among American's most prolific serial murderers, his penchant for crafting housewares from human skin has more than earned him a spot in that dark pantheon. Beyond his appeal to true crime enthusiasts, his deeds have generated multiple major media franchises: nine Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies at last count, as well as several films and a TV show based on Robert Bloch's Psycho series of novels—all of them loosely, but definitely, based on Gein. All that's before we get into the do…

I've been reading and writing about productivity techniques for years now, and I continue to be shocked by the sheer variety and quantity on offer. There are so many (some admittedly more "duh" than others), and while many could easily slot right into my workflow, others led me to think, "Wow, that one wouldn't work for me at all." Obviously I don't personally use all of the methods I've written about, but it's not because I don't believe in them. The fact is that no technique will work for every person, and no one person is going to be suited to every technique. The trick is to figure out which one(s) might work for you. It's easy to learn about a technique, be persuad…