Setting Up Your Home Office

When you want to be more productive, it helps to have a role model. Financial blogs are forever interviewing contemporary CEOs about their work habits, but those aren’t that inspirational; they’re always claiming that meditation and not answering emails are the keys to success, which isn’t super helpful to the average person who doesn’t have the time or resources to meditate or the luxury of hiring an assistant. For real inspo, you might want to try looking back in history to a time before tech founders preached about a #grindset: Ivy Lee, the founder of modern public relations, came up with a productivity method so good that it’s lived on for 100 years—and it still bears…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Sonos has always occupied a specific corner of the audio world. Its products look minimalist, cost more than most competitors, and assume you care as much about software and longevity as you do about raw sound. The Arc Ultra is the company’s current flagship soundbar, and it follows that same logic. At full price, it’s a tough recommendation for anyone who just wants louder TV speakers. But right now, it is down to $879 from $1,099, a $220 drop and the lowest price it has hit so far, according to price trackers. …

So many great productivity hacks come from the Japanese manufacturing industry. The 5S technique helps you keep your workspace clean so you can get more done, kaizen helps you improve the processes and workflow of your job, and kanban helps you schedule your tasks in the most efficient way. These are helpful even if you’re not working within the famed Toyota Production System; they’re adaptable to fit all kinds of work scenarios, which is similarly true for the 3 Ms that originated there, too. The 3 Ms are kinds of waste you should identify and eliminate to keep your work running smoothly. Once you learn how to identify and get rid of them, you can be even more productive…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Considering we're awaiting word of a (likely) sixth season renewal, it's undeniable that Emily in Paris has been an unqualified success for Netflix, a reliable hit that rivals the success of buzzier genre shows like Stranger Things. Lily Collins stars as the faux pas-prone Emily Cooper, who moves to Paris and lands a temporary job at a glitzy French marketing firm kind of by accident. She doesn't speak the language and doesn't get the culture, but slowly manages to ingratiate herself to the locals while juggling work and romance in a new country. The series hails from Darren Star, creator of Sex and the City, so her buddin…

There are warning signs that your home network may have been compromised, such as unusual traffic patterns and slowdowns in system performance, but now there's a simple tool to help determine if your router or connected devices are being used to conduct malicious activity. IP Check, from threat monitoring firm GreyNoise, will alert you if your IP address has been observed scanning the internet as part of a botnet or residential proxy network. As GreyNoise outlines, residential IP compromise often isn't obvious to the user because you're still able to conduct business as usual, such as streaming, emailing, and web browsing. All the while, though, threat actors are routing…

Perhaps you completely forgot about the “Secret Santa” gift exchange, or your estimated delivery date got pushed back to 2026. Whatever your reasons, you’re in need of a last-minute gift, and your options are limited. If you're reading this at a time when it's too late for online delivery, and in-person store options are already closed, then all that’s left is the glory of your local 24-hour drug store. If you have access to a major chain like Walgreens or CVS, you could be in surprisingly good shape for this last-minute gift. All it takes is a little ingenuity to level up this gift from "a protein bar" to "a gym bro collection," or "some loose nail polish" to a "curated …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. It never fails to annoy me when I tell my friends here in New York City that I am cold and they reply, "But you're from North Dakota! This is nothing compared to what you grew up with." I know. Why do you think I left the coldest state in the continental U.S. as soon as I turned 18? I hate the cold in North Dakota, but that doesn't mean I hate the cold in New York any less. Indeed, wherever I am in winter, I'm at war with the cold—midwestern cold, northeastern cold, it's all cold. This is why I've devised a number of plans to mitigate it, and the most useful of my anti-cold measures is the collection of heated accessories …

The more you work out, the fitter you'll get. Your VO2max, sometimes described on wearables as a "cardio fitness" score, is a number that tends to be higher among people who are more cardiovascularly fit. But it's not the only measure of fitness, and you should know what it really means. What VO2max really is (as measured in a lab)Smartwatches and fitness trackers don't actually measure VO2max; they just estimate it. To actually find your VO2max, you'd need to go to an exercise lab and do a test on a treadmill or cycle while hooked up to equipment that measures your heart rate and the air you're exhaling. I did exactly this kind of test to compare my real VO2max to the n…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. At $749, the unlocked 128GB Google Pixel 10 Pro has slipped into its most affordable price yet on Amazon, down from its original $999 launch price, according to online price trackers. Stack the promo code PIXEL10, and you shave off another $100, which reframes the phone entirely. At full price, it felt like a confident but pricey Android flagship. At this discount, it becomes a far easier recommendation for people who value polish over raw benchmark wins. Google Pixel 10 Pro …

Inbox management, like so much else, is a necessary evil in our day-to-day lives. As such, it’s best handled with the use of a strict system, but those can be tricky to implement and stick to. Also like so much else, finding the right system is time-intensive and adds a new layer of stress onto an already annoying task. Here’s a system that’s simple, doesn’t take a lot of time to start using, and can actually help you get through your unreads without overwhelming you. It’s called “yesterbox.” What is the yesterbox inbox management system?This technique—and its funny name—both come from late Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, who described yesterbox as a way of “relieving email guilt.…

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) …

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 …

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…

Need some help writing your emails? Through the wonders of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), you can now get messages composed on your behalf in Gmail, in Apple Mail, in Outlook, and in many other email clients. Most of the time, the AI option pops up straight away, ready to give you however much assistance you need. The pitch is that you can offload the drudgery of dealing with email to AI, and move on to other tasks that may be more interesting and important. Anecdotally, I've spoken to quite a few people who now use AI chatbots in this way. But it's not something I'm ready to embrace, and I don't think I ever will. These are my reasons, which may or may not resonate…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. With the rise of streaming culture, a lot of gamers have started investing in computers that don't just play games well, but that look good while doing it. Asus's newest pre-built gaming desktop, the ROG G1000, is pretty by-the-book when it comes to high-end performance, but it's got one major selling point when it comes to those all-important gamer aesthetics: holograms. Built into this computer's front panel and one of its side panels, safely tucked into inaccessible glass windows, are rapidly rotating LED strips that, when in motion, create convincing full-color images that appear to have depth. The "frame rate" can be …

There's very little privacy on the internet: Data brokers collect tons of information about you and your online activity and sell it to anyone interested in marketing to you. California residents have gained more control over their personal data than those in other states since the passage of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2018, and they now have a one-stop shop for requesting that their information be removed from hundreds of data brokers registered with the state (and any that do so in the future). California isn't the only state to enact stronger consumer privacy laws in recent years, but its Delete Requests and Opt-Out Platform (DROP) is the first of i…

Part of the fun of watching sports is that you don't know what's going to happen. TV shows and movies follow story beats, meaning you can usually get a sense for where things are heading, but sports do not work that way. The totally unexpected can, and does, frequently occur—and that's the reason people keep tuning in, whether their team is dominating or an underdog. Sometimes, though, you can't catch the game live, but still want a bit of that feeling. That's why leagues offer extended highlights, featuring all the key moments, complete with the commentary from the broadcast. These can feel almost like watching the full game, and I love catching up with them the next day…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Zendaya is busy. Euphoria, which she produces in addition to starring in, is finally set to return for its third season on April 12, four years after our last visit to East Highland, and nearly seven since it premiered. As frustrating as these between-season breaks can be, they leave plenty of time to explore other tales of the wild lives of high schoolers. It's all relative, though: While growing up in never a picnic, there's drama, and then there's drama. These 15 streamalikes vary widely in tone and style, but they all make clear that being a young person in the 21st century is not f*cking easy. Stream the first two se…

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 want to truly grasp what you’re learning, not just memorize it short-term for a test, you should familiarize yourself with Kolb’s learning cycle. Hell, even if you do just want to pass a test, you should familiarize yourself with Kolb’s learning cycle. Educational theorist David A. Kolb published his experiential learning theory in 1984 and it’s been popular ever since, at least among teachers. If you haven't heard of it, that's no issue; let's go over what it's all about so you can learn better. …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. You can get Microsoft Windows 11 Pro on sale for just $10 right now on StackSocial, which would typically cost $200 at the Microsoft Store. The sale ends October 12. Once you've purchased, the redemption code and setup instructions will be sent to your inbox. Just make sure your system meets the minimum requirements (like a 1GHz processor, 4GB RAM, TPM 2.0, and UEFI firmware, among others). This isn’t an upgrade path for unsupported PCs—it’s a fresh install for machines that meet the full list of Windows 11 Pro requirements. The Windows 11 Pro layou…

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. Taking notes, whether in class or in meetings, is a standard part of learning. Studies have suggested writing by hand helps you retain information better than using a computer, which is why you should only bring a notebook and pen with you to class in addition to (or instead of) your laptop. But there’s more to effective note-taking than jotting down a bunch of bullet points. To be useful, your notes should be organized into topics and subtopics, with a sensible flow that you’ll be able to follow later.…

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. 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. Simple, basic hand tools are a necessity. Whether you need to tackle basic home maintenance projects or just be prepared to deal …

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 on October 7-8, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales 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're hoping to catch the future early, you should check out these XReal One AR…

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. Garmin’s Venu X1, its high-end watch that launched a few month…

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 are here from 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. I got my first e-reader around 15 years ago—a Kindle—and i…