Setting Up Your Home Office

Have you ever woken up and been filled with immediate dread because the day ahead of you is so busy? It happens to me all the time and is, frankly, a miserable way to greet the morning, setting an equally miserable tone for the day. It simply does not set you up to have a positive experience or be productive. There’s a way to quickly right the ship, however, and turn all those tasks into motivation. It’s called a “brain dump” and you should try doing one in the morning to have a more productive and peaceful day. What is a brain dump?A brain dump is similar to a brainstorm, except you’re actually (figuratively) dumping the contents of your brain. In this case, you’re dump…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Just a few months ago, Oura won a lawsuit against rival smart ring makers Ultrahuman and RingConn. Now, they've initiated proceedings against four more companies—the makers of the Samsung Galaxy Ring, Reebok Smart Ring, Amazfit Helio Ring, and the Luna Ring. Oura announced on their website that they have filed an ITC complaint against those four companies. The ITC is the U.S. International Trade Commission, and Oura says its complaint is "for the unlawful importation and sale of products that infringe on several of Oura’s patents." Oura's previous win against Ultrahuman and RingConn resulted in a judgment that those compa…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Black Friday sales probably have you deep in your Christmas shopping already, but don't forget we've got another holiday to get through first. And while nothing gets you in the mood for the holidays like a good Christmas movie, there are a host (no pun intended) of Thanksgiving movies too. Now, there are plenty of films with Thanksgiving vibes (family gatherings and cozy fall colors), but you have to dig a bit deeper if you want that holiday specificity. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles gets mentioned overwhelmingly when people are asked about their favorite Turkey Day movie, in part because it's a legitimately good, but a…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Giving the gift of tools for the holidays can be a great way to bring a smile to your favorite DIY enthusiast or home improvement weekend warrior, but quality tools can be expensive. However, you can still give a nice gift to someone who wants to do their own home maintenance or build their own shelves—you just have to know what to look for. Here are some of the best tools you can give for under $100, from someone who personally loves to wield a power drill. Best cordless tools under $100Cordless tools can be some of the most expensive for a home to…

At this late stage in the streaming era, we're all overwhelmed by more digital subscriptions than we can keep track of, from fitness apps to cloud storage. Still, it certainly feels as though Netflix is one of the subscriptions that people are least likely to ditch—and that's backed up by the numbers. Perhaps it's because Netflix was the first company to really make streaming work, or perhaps it's the vast catalog of content it's amassed, or perhaps it's just because of Stranger Things and Squid Game. Whatever the reason, Netflix's churn rate is impressively low. Subscribers stick with it. Certainly it's always something I've long considered a mainstay on my streaming dev…

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…

Black Friday—once simply known as "the day after Thanksgiving"—has become a quasi-holiday in the United States, one marked by consumer discounts, ceaseless shopping, and occasional violence. Black Friday has grown and metastasized so much that it isn't a mere day anymore: It's a week, a month, a veritable state of mind. (Speaking of which, check out Lifehacker's Black Friday coverage. We got all the deals, baby!) While waking up early and shopping at physical stores on Black Friday is waning as online shopping grows, it’s still a big deal in the U.S.—it’s estimated that around 90 million Americans shopped online and 76.2 million Americans visited a brick-and-mortar store…

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 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 an…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up soon, but deals are already trickling out across marketplaces across the Internet. If you're shopping for home goods or home improvement items (like I always am), this is the time to load up on tools, organizers, appliances, and more, all for cheaper than you'll pay during other times of the year. Check this live blog often to see the best sales on home products that we're finding in the lead-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are fast approaching, but many deals are actually already here. I'm always hunting for deals on at-home fitness products, but whether you need some dumbbells, more serious equipment, or anything else to boost your health and wellness journey, this is the moment to save. Check this live blog often to see the best fitness sales we're finding in the lead-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. If you’re like most people, you bought a standard claw hammer once long ago and never thought much about its weight or design. I was like that for a long time, too, but I noticed that every time I worked on a project involving lots of hammering, my arm would get fatigued quickly, and the last half of the work would be a misery. I recently fell down a bit of a rabbit hole regarding hammers—the different weights and types-and decided it was time to splurge a bit and buy a titanium hammer (specifically, this one). It was one of the best purchases I’ve made recently. Titanium vs. steel hammerMost hammers are made from steel, w…

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. Ever since Google introduced its Chromebook Plus program in 2023, which promises a certain amount of power and screen resolution for your device, it's been trying its best to get people to game on their Chromebooks. There are Chromebooks with OLED screens, high refresh rates, and even light-up keyboards, but no matter how many bells and whistles you slap on a Chromebook, it's still not going to have nearly as much raw processing power as a more traditional laptop. That's where cloud gaming comes in. This lets you stream games from the cloud, if you're willing to put up with a certain amount of video compression and input d…

Your Mac now has a built-in clipboard manager, which means that it can finally remember everything you've copied. This feature is disabled by default, but you can enable it pretty easily and start keeping track of the text, photos, and other files that are in your clipboard. The catch is that you need to be running macOS 26 Tahoe to use the built-in clipboard manager, which isn't an option for those with older Macs. Also, Apple's implementation of the clipboard manager is pretty basic, and if you need more features, you're going to have to use third-party alternatives. With that in mind, here is how to pick the best clipboard manager for your Mac. Spotlight search: The b…

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. Apple's newest AirPods Pro are great. They have excellent sound quality, up to twice the noise cancellation of the previous-generation Pros, and even include a built-in heart rate sensor. Those features don't come cheap, though. Like most brand-new Apple products, they're expensive, and typically fetch $249 at any store you choose to buy them from. While they're certainly pricey, I don't think the MSRP is unwarranted. $249 has always been the price for a new pair of AirPods Pro, and this third generation adds new features without raising the cost. …

As it does every year, Google has picked its favorite apps, games, and books of 2025 from the Play Store catalog—and the annual selection is always useful as a pointer towards some high-quality titles for your Android devices that you may have missed so far. Topping the pile is Focus Friend from YouTuber Hank Green, which aims to keep you on task and undistracted via a series of cutesy animations and cartoon living spaces. The less you check your phone, the better the experience for your 'bean' inside the app. It's an app we've written about before, and I've given it a go myself while trying to focus on writing this article with as few distractions as possible. I've also …

Whether you actually go back and look at photos, watch videos, or review files from years past, you may someday be disappointed if those memories disappear forever, either because you didn't back them up or your one backup was destroyed along the way. I know I have done a poor job of keeping track of media as I have upgraded computers and phones over the years, and I've lost my fair share of photos, videos, and documents along the way, whether on misplaced or damaged external drives or from simply forgetting to back up at all. Here's how to ensure your data is available for years to come. You need multiple backups of your dataOne approach to backing up your data is the…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Black Friday deals used to be relegated to the day after Thanksgiving. These days, however, they start much earlier—so why not take advantage? If you’re shopping for gifts for your favorite DIY enthusiast, or you just want to take advantage of deals for your own tool set, now is a good time to start looking. I usually take the opportunity to expand my tool battery collection if there isn’t an exciting new cordless tool I haven’t tried yet around this time of year, and that’s how I have kept a rotating collection of batteries to power all of my carpe…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. A price drop always stands out more when the product in question already has a reputation for delivering above its size, and that’s the case with the Bose SoundLink Plus. It hasn’t been on the market for long, but it’s already earned strong reviews—CNET even labeled it “the Goldilocks of Bose Bluetooth speakers.” And right now, ahead of Black Friday, it’s down to $199 from $269, which price trackers show is the lowest it’s ever been. Bose SoundLink Plus Portable Bluetooth Speaker …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. I've reviewed a ton of high-tech smart glasses for Lifehacker, and this early Black Friday deal on the RayNeo Air 3s Pro display glasses is excellent. They are on sale for $249 on Amazon (originally $299) until Dec. 1. RayNeo Air 3s $269.00 at Amazon …

You know it's important to prioritize your to-do list, and may have tried various methods to do so, from the Eisenhower Matrix (to determine how timely and urgent each task is), to the Pareto principle (to decide how to allocate your time to maximize your results). The problem is that determining what's actually a priority can be an abstract problem. Some people work best when dealing with cold, hard numbers—and there's a way to take a more quantitative approach to prioritizing your to-dos. Why prioritize your to-do list?The Pareto principle, mentioned above, suggests that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your work, so you have to be picky about what you focus o…

Sometimes, it's not the tasks on your to-do list that overwhelm you, but simply the act of sorting them out and figuring out where to start. Before you can prioritize your responsibilities and setting out a schedule for getting everything done (using strategies like "eating the frog" or creating a 1-3-5 to-do list), you have to identify what those big tasks are and what capacity you have to take them on. If you are the type of person that finds it helpful to visualize these things, let me introduce you to a pair of strategies that both involve imagining tasks as rocks: The "pickle jar theory" and the "big rocks theory." What is the pickle jar theory?The pickle jar theory …