Setting Up Your Home Office

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Clicks, the company behind those physical keyboard cases for your smartphone, has announced a new device, but it'll look pretty familiar to anyone who's used a Blackberry before. It's called the Clicks Communicator, and it's a pocketable little handset that's perfect for anyone who misses having physical buttons on their phone. It comes with a full, old-school style QWERTY keyboard and runs Android 16, and while you can pump it full of apps and use it standalone, Clicks says it expects many of its customers will prefer to use it as a minimalistic companion to a primary smartphone. In that way, this device is designed to be…

There are a lot of ways I trick myself into meeting my goals, like coming up with various rewards and punishments for myself or outsourcing my progress tracking to apps. In general, I'm a deeply goal-oriented person and I am, for better or worse, obsessed with "winning"—which I always thought made me a perfect candidate for complicated productivity techniques like detailed to-do lists full of tasks in order of priority. While I do love a good technique, I decided to switch things up last year when I got worried that maybe I was spending so much time prioritizing and planning that I wasn't spending enough time doing. So I just focused on the doing—and it worked. Here's wha…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. There's something extra satisfying about starting a new year with an upgrade that actually makes a difference in your daily routine. After years of relying on my traditional percussive massage guns, I've made the switch to the Rally Orbital Massager. And one by one, my friends have started following in my footsteps to make the same move. Hey, there's something validating about watching people you trust independently come to the same conclusion. Why I love the Rally Orbital MassagerDon't get me wrong—my Theragun still serves me well. It's been a reliable companion after workouts, helping ease tension and speed up recovery.…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Winter weather can be miserable, but there is one huge perk: snowball fights. Any time a deep carpet of snow gets dumped on us, you can count on a bunch of kids (or young-at-heart adults) engaging in epic snowball fights, sometimes involving surprisingly well-engineered snow forts and sophisticated tactics. This is the 21st century, however—if you’re still fighting your snowball fights with nothing but your bare hands and a sense of determination, you’re missing out. We can’t all be Buddy the Elf, shotgunning perfectly made snowballs like some sort of winter weather Terminator—but we can invest in some of the most fun snow…

Petkit just announced three new smart pet tech products ahead of CES. Despite the conference not kicking off until Tuesday, the company shared details around its upcoming devices that are likely to launch this spring. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Petkit advertises all three pet devices as "AI-powered," and while that's been a go-to gimmick for companies since 2023, there are some unique applications here—assuming the devices actually do what Petkit says they do. Purobot Crystal Duo litterboxPetkit says the Purobot Crystal Duo is the first AI-powered open-top litter box, and that the Purobot uses the tech for health detection. This device has an 720p AI-powered camera that mon…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If you actually want to stick to your healthy goals for the year, I'm warning you now, you need some kind of plan—something concrete to motivate you. Something that helped me stay on top of my workouts a ton over the last year was my Peloton Bike and subscription to the brand's app—they enabled me to work out from home, at the gym, or anywhere, basically. Right now, you can get both those (and other equipment, if you're so inclined) for a discount, so this might be the moment to consider an investment. The Peloton equipment sale …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Pebble, the early smartwatch pioneer, has added a new model to its relaunched lineup, and it’s the thin, round model Pebble fans have been waiting for. What’s even more intriguing to me is the fact that the Pebble Round 2 doesn’t have a heart rate sensor, signaling that a smartwatch doesn’t have to be a fitness watch, too. The Pebble Round 2 starts shipping in May, and is available for pre-order now at $199. The new watch is meant to be a modern remake of 2015’s Pebble Time Round. Pebble fans loved the round watch, and every thread about new products on the Pebble subreddit has at least a few comments begging for a new ver…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. I do a lot of things on a regular basis that people might classify as “good habits.” I go for a walk every morning. I hit the gym nearly every day. I prep my meals on the weekends so I always have something healthy to eat for lunch. But I didn’t arrive at these behaviors solely through habit stacking or some other clever hack. Because the truth is, most “habits” are really skills that take work and time to develop—not simple set-it-and-forget-it hacks. Most “habits” aren’t that simplePsychologists define “habits” as things we do automatically in a specific situation. “For example, the act of hair twirling may eventually o…

What kind of New Year’s resolution you make depends on your unique goals—which means you need a way to track your progress that is just as unique. If your resolution is to cut back on social media use and your friend’s is to run a faster mile, you won’t measure success the same way. Even if you swear 2026 is the year you spend less time on your phone (which I've sworn every year), tap into the power of handheld tech and use these apps to keep yourself on track. I like all the best general progress tracking apps, but when it comes to resolutions, you are looking at something time-bound and specific by its very nature, so you should try apps that are tailored more to what y…

I’m sure you’ve heard it everywhere: Check with a doctor before beginning any exercise program. This is the standard disclaimer on fitness advice of any sort, which most of us probably ignore. But should you? Not necessarily, it turns out. Why are you supposed to check with a doctor before exercising?The concern underlying this oft-repeated statement is that there are rare cases where a person can die suddenly during exercise. When this happens, it’s usually in a person who (a) had some kind of underlying medical issue; (b) was not used to exercising; and (c) did very intense exercise that they were unprepared for. For a long time, there was a sense among many medical an…

Skinny is officially back in—not that it ever really left, if you ask me. Between "what I eat in a day" videos and before-and-after transformations, there's always been this undercurrent of weight loss anxiety masquerading as wellness. "Weight loss" is assumed to be synonymous with "healthy," but that's never been the whole story. And during this time for reflection and goal-setting, I urge you to think bigger than simply making yourself smaller. If you've struggled to identify health goals beyond weight loss, you're not alone. We've been conditioned to believe that smaller bodies are the ultimate achievement, when in reality, health is so much more expansive, personal, a…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Smart glasses have promised convenience for years, but few have felt practical enough to wear daily. The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses (Gen 1) come closer by keeping things familiar. They look like classic Wayfarers, not a tech experiment, which lowers the barrier right away. Right now, they’re also easier to justify on price. The matte black version with polarized lenses is 25% off at $246.75, down from $329, which is the lowest price so far, according to price trackers. A glossy black version with clear lenses costs less at $224.25 if you don’t need …

Like everybody else, at the end of every December, I start thinking hard about what I want the next year to be like for me. You can chalk it up to all the Capricorn placements in my birth chart if you want (and I do!) or blame the cultural obsession with a "new year, new me" approach, but I take my New Year's resolutions seriously and generally try to come up with realistic, actionable plans to improve myself and my life. It's easy to identify the things I want to change and even easy to figure out how, exactly, I should do that, but that doesn't mean it's easy to stick to the new plan. Real life gets in the way no matter what year it is, but the degree to which it does t…

Thanks to my gig teaching spin classes, I have a front-row seat to a reliable annual phenomenon: My classes are packed for the first few weeks of the year as people make New Year's resolutions—but by mid-February, I'm back to teaching normal-sized groups of people who are grateful the "January joiners" have cleared out. I'm always sad to see the new faces go, though, because I do think it's possible to set a New Year's resolution and stick to it, even if it's not the norm. There are plenty of self-betterment goals you can set as a new year approaches, both in and out of the gym, but no matter what you endeavor to do, it's important to have an implementation strategy that…

Rewarding yourself can backfire. If you tell yourself, “I’ll only listen to my favorite podcast while I’m at the gym,” it takes just one moment of weakness to realize you can cheat and listen to it any time you want. Instead, try this: Reward yourself with something that has no enjoyment value whatsoever. Like a checkmark on your calendar. I first heard this tip from writer Tim Clare’s podcast. If you want to stay motivated, he says, the reward has to be so crappy that you’re not actually working for the reward. He said that he puts a checkmark on his calendar every day he writes, and at the end of the week enough checkmarks earn a gold star. The same approach has worked…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. If you’ve been doing any kind of work around any kind of house for a while, you probably have a few trusty old-school C-Clamps on hand. The C-Clamp has been in use for thousands of years. It’s one of those dead-simple tools that just works. It’s also one of those tools you tend to collect multiple examples of, in different sizes. Typically, you use a C-Clamp to, uh, clamp stuff together, like two pieces of wood, or to clamp something into place while you work on it (I use them a lot to cut lumber so I can have both hands on the saw, as I am allergic to emergency rooms.) But the C-Clamp is actually a very versatile tool tha…

When it comes to digital note taking, you usually have two choices: Do you want E Ink, or do you want speed? Devices like the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft and the Remarkable Paper Pro have shown there's definitely an appetite for E Ink note taking, even if it can be a bit laggy. But for the most responsive digital notebook possible, you usually have to settle for something like an iPad with a stylus. Now, TCL wants to change that. The budget-friendly tablet and TV company has finally announced its first full-fledged digital notebook: the TCL Note A1 NXTPAPER. Launching on Kickstarter soon and releasing sometime in February, the trick here is a clever one: Notes taken on this d…

Some Grubhub users have received a tempting email offer from the food delivery service: Send $1,000 in bitcoin to a specified wallet, and get 10 times that amount back. Unfortunately, this is very much a scam. As BleepingComputer reports, these promo emails were sent from addresses on b.grubhub.com, a legitimate Grubhub subdomain, so they appear verified in recipients' inboxes. Two examples of senders include merry-christmast@b.grubhub.com and crypto-promotion@b.grubhub.com. Beyond that, there are some pretty clear red flags. The subject line reads "30 minutes left - We'll 10x your Bitcoin!" to promote a sense of urgency and an offer too good to be true (but also too g…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. If exercising more is part of your New Year’s resolution and you need earbuds that won’t slip out or die mid-session, the JBL Endurance Race 2 are worth a look at their current $49.95 price. They launched at $89.95, and online price trackers confirm this is the lowest price they’ve hit so far. JBL Endurance Race 2 ANC Sports Wireless Earbuds (Black) …

If you received gift cards over the holidays, don't throw them in a drawer and forget about them. While many gift card scams involve thieves demanding payments—for everything from taxes and fines owed to outstanding utility bills—via prepaid cards, there's a less obvious type of fraud known as gift card draining. How gift card draining scams workIf you forget how much money is on a gift card you received a while ago, you're likely to check the balance online. You'll typically need to enter your card number and PIN or security code, but some websites that claim to provide gift card balances are actually collecting that information to use it later. Always use the official …

It’s well-established that physical clutter impairs your productivity and focus, going as far as to make you exhausted, stressed, and burnt out, which is why decluttering your workspace is key component in a lot of productivity techniques. In this day and age, though, your "workspace" isn't always (or, in some cases, even) an office or desk. Your phone and computer are your workspace. That's where you spend most of your work day looking and interacting—and when it's cluttered, you can feel discombobulated, the same as you might with a messy cubicle. It's time to stop thinking only about decluttering the physical world and make a better plan to keep the digital one in good…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. A healthy dose of cardio is an important part of your exercise routine, and for a lot of us, "zone 2" cardio is going to make up a big chunk of that. Low-intensity cardio—sometimes called LISS or “zone 2”—used to be an underrated form of exercise. It's super trendy now, after spending years on the sidelines while HIIT and lifting-only routines ran the field. But what is zone 2 cardio, exactly? How can you make sure you're doing it right? And is it really so bad if your heart rate drifts into zone 3? What is zone 2 training?Zone 2 training is cardio done at a steady, low intensity. It has benefits for aerobic training (so …

The first supermarket, the Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, opened its doors in 1916. It was the first time people could wander around a store and pick their items from a shelf instead of handing a list to a clerk who would gather everything for them—typically without any choice of brand or style. Grocery shopping remains a daily or weekly ritual for most people, and it can be a real chore—especially if you’re shopping for a large family. My own grocery lists aren’t all that long, but I still find myself juggling my phone and a scrap of paper as I walk around the store, checking for digital coupons and trying to do quick math. So when I read that one of the local grocery stores …

If you use WhatsApp, you may be targeted by scammers looking to take over your account by pairing their browser to your number. This scheme, dubbed GhostPairing by researchers, uses WhatsApp's device linking process to allow fraudsters to access all of your messages, impersonate you in chats, and perpetuate the scam to your contacts. Here's how threat actors are hijacking WhatsApp accounts—and how to defend yours. GhostPairing manipulates WhatsApp device linkingWhatsApp allows users to link their desktop or browser to their account without needing to enter login credentials in one of two ways: scanning a QR code and approving the session or confirming a numeric pairing c…

One of the most annoying restrictions in Gmail is that, once you've picked an email address, you're stuck with it. There are exceptions for third-party addresses, like work emails tied to a company's domain, but for the typical @gmail.com account, no dice. Personally, I've had a number of loyalty programs and store accounts tied to an embarrassingly edgy email from high school for decades now, but finally, it seems like I'll be able to change it. A recently updated Google support page says the company is now "gradually rolling out" the ability to change your Gmail address, with some limitations. Oddly, the page is only available in Hindi for the moment, so I've reached ou…