Setting Up Your Home Office

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Each year, Apple releases new models of the Apple Watch, but the updates aren't always that significant—meaning it might make more sense to choose an older one and save on the purchase price. That's certainly a good option right now, because you can get last year's Apple Watch Series 10 with GPS + Cellular for $299, $200 off the original price, at Walmart (in four colors!). Apple Watch Series 10 GPS + Cellular 42mm …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. This Lenovo ThinkCentre M90q Mini PC (2021) is on sale for $455.99 on StackSocial right now, offering business-grade performance in a compact form factor small enough to hide behind a monitor. Inside its 7-inch frame sits a 10th Gen Intel Core i5 processor with six cores, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD. That’s enough muscle for multitasking, large spreadsheets, or running several browser tabs at once without slowdown. It’s not built for heavy graphics work or gaming, but for office productivity or remote setups, it’s more than capable of kee…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. There’s something oddly comforting about holding an entire childhood in your hands. The Retropian X Handheld Retro Gaming Console is currently on sale for $89.99 at StackSocial, bringing back that exact feeling. Think of it as a portable time machine with over 20,000 preloaded games spanning more than 30 classic systems, all tucked into a body small enough to slip into a jacket pocket. No cartridges, adapters, or online sign-ins, just a black handheld with a sharp 5.1-inch IPS display and a simple mission: let you play the hits from your childhood, …

SMART goals are a helpful way to turn your ideas and to-dos into actionable plans for the near and far future, but they're not always the best approach. If you work on a larger team or need to track highly ambitious, long-term goals, for example, SMART might not be the best method to turn to. Other goal-tracking methods, like FAST and PACT, may be a better fit. You'll need to start by familiarizing yourself with these alternate methods, but once you do, you'll see that they are more tailored to specific needs and might just be your best bet. When should you use SMART goals?SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—that's what the acronym s…

I'm a former Android-Mac hybrid user. Laugh all you want—we exist. I enjoy having a polished operating system on my computer and an endlessly hackable operating system on my phone, and the combination of Mac and Android gave me all of that. I only stopped using Android alongside my Mac a couple years ago, mostly because an iPhone SE was cheaper than most mid-range Android options at the time. When I think about switching back, though, I realize how much I'll miss the integrations. Using a Mac and an iPhone gives you access to all kinds of tricks. Among the ones I use the most are the shared notifications, the syncing clipboard, and the easy ways to sync files. There's als…

If you've booked a hotel through a platform like Booking.com or Expedia, beware any communication that directs you to confirm your payment details to hold your reservation. Threat actors are targeting the hospitality industry with a phishing campaign designed to steal from travelers. As outlined by security firm Sekoia.io and reported by The Hacker News, the scheme is referred to as "I Paid Twice" because hotel customers are eventually conned into handing over their banking information. Scammers contact guests via WhatsApp or email about their booking, saying that they need to verify their payment or risk cancellation. The link goes to a fake landing page that looks like…

Approximately every five to seven months, I am possessed by a desire to "see if I like running." I suit up in activewear and my best shoes, jury-rig my apartment keys into the hair tie holding up my ponytail, and optimistically set off down Manhattan's FDR Drive. After some time, the results of my experiment are clear: I still hate running and remain convinced anyone who says it's "euphoric" or "relaxing" is a Nike-sponsored liar. Some things do impact the enjoyability of running, however, like listening to guided runs. Peloton's guided runs have increased my likelihood to get (and stay) on the treadmill in the gym, for instance, and I have been choosing running over cyc…

Shopping online? Google wants you to trust AI to click the buy button for you. Rolling out today, Google's new "agentic checkout" adds onto the company's existing price-tracking feature, so it's not something you'll see all the time. Instead, when you get a price drop notification on an object you've been tracking, you might now see a new "buy for me" button that will send all the necessary information to the store's website and make the final purchase for you. Credit: Google Google says the AI will always ask your permission …

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…

Today, Google announced three new AI shopping features, all centered around keeping you engaged with its AI throughout the entire shopping process. On the one hand, these features have the potential to make shopping more convenient—on the other hand, maybe lowering friction isn't the best idea when it comes to spending money. Beyond selling you on convenience, these features all share something else in common—helping businesses up their clickthrough rates. It starts with AI Mode and Gemini, which can now access all the same information as Google Search's shopping tab. That means you'll start to see product cards alongside your AI answers, which you can click on for a bunc…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Pomodoro technique is a superstar in the world of productivity methods because its premise—that you should work hard for 25 minutes, then reward yourself with a few minutes off—is effective and appealing. But that doesn’t mean it works perfectly for everyone. Like any other method, it’s adaptable and, once you get the hang of it, should be customized to meet your unique needs. And if you find that Pomodoro's 25-minute work sessions with five-minute cooldowns aren’t cutting it for you, there's a similar but more flexible alternative: flowtime. What is the flowtime technique?The flowtime technique is a spin on Pomodoro,…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Scheduling your day is an important part of being productive. You can (and should) prioritize your to-dos by timeliness and time box your way to a jam-packed, detailed schedule, but there’s more to time management than that. You should also consider dividing up not only your day, but your week overall, to maximize productivity. The trick here is to theme your workdays. Instead of jumping from task to task on any given day, try grouping all the similar ones together and parking them on a specific day, when your schedule allows. By putting similar tasks together on the same day, you’ll stay in that “zone” longer, focusing o…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. A small upgrade can make an old TV feel new again, and the Amazon Fire TV Stick HD is the kind of plug-and-play streaming device that does exactly that. It’s down to $17.99 right now (from $34.99), which price-tracking sites confirm is its lowest recorded price. Amazon Fire TV Stick HD (1080p) $17.99 at Amazon …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. While I've been thinking about the sale prices we might see on Black Friday, Garmin just went and dropped the prices on several of their watches. The Forerunner 265 and 965 are at their lowest prices ever, both $150 off. Several other watches are on surprisingly good sales as well. Garmin Forerunner 265 Running Smartwatch …

Amazingly, your Mac has only just gained the ability to show you a full list of what you've copied. macOS has always allowed you to copy and paste items, but if you copied multiple items back-to-back, there was no way to view the earliest items you added to your clipboard. Sure, third-party apps have filled this gap for many years now, but macOS itself didn't allow you to easily view multiple items stored in the clipboard, until now. With macOS 26 Tahoe, your Mac's Spotlight search has added support for clipboard history, which means that you can view pretty much everything you've copied in the past 30 days. Here's how to set up and use clipboard history on your Mac. How …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. The Pomodoro technique—so named for the tomato-shaped timer its originator used to track his own work schedule—is widely considered one of the best productivity techniques out there. That's why I've recommended it a lot in the past and why it regularly appears on best-of lists of productivity methods. It's simple: Set a timer for 25 minutes (or use a specially designed app) and work on a task for that amount of time, then take a five-minute break before setting the timer and working again. After four 25-minute cycles, you get a longer break. In theory, this keeps you both motivated and clear-headed. Beloved as it is, it d…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. When it comes to the common, everyday tools we use to do quick maintenance and repair work around the house, there’s a tendency to just stick with what you have. If you have a measuring tape or clamp in your tool chest, you’re probably not going to think about getting a new one until the old one breaks. Usually, that’s a good practice—if a tool is doing its job, why waste money on a new one? One reason is to upgrade that tool. Just because the standard spirit level you’ve been using for the last decade still does the job doesn’t mean an upgraded version won’t do the job better. These upgraded versions of common, everyday t…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Plenty of people have been waiting for a good excuse to grab Samsung’s newest foldable, and today’s deal could be the nudge they needed. The 512GB Galaxy Z Fold 7 now sits at $1,719.99, down from its regular price of $2,119.99, a $400 drop. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 Cell Phone, Jet Black $1,719.99 at Amazon …

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Sony's 1000X series have been around since 2016, improving on the previous iteration to eventually land on the Sony WH-1000XM6, the best over-ear headphones for audio quality currently on the market. But not everyone can (or needs to) drop nearly half a grand on headphones. The WH-1000XM5 are a generation older and were the best headphones for audio quality up until this year, when they were succeeded. They're currently $248 (originally $399.99), their lowest price they've ever been during the early Black Friday sale, according to price-tracking too…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. For years, "burnout" has been a cultural buzzword, but the concept isn't new: Working too hard and too fast just isn't sustainable, so while productivity techniques that advise you on how to prioritize multiple tasks in a single day are helpful in the short term, they can't last forever for everybody. I love structured to-do lists and days where everything comes together, but in a world where work, school, personal wellness, family, and friends are putting endless demands on us, it's not always possible to get it all done in one morning—even with the most detailed, time-boxed schedule. If you feel some burnout coming on or…

We may earn a commission from links on this page. No matter what kind of productivity goals you have and which techniques you plan to use to get it all done, you still probably start with a to-do list. Learning to formulate a solid to-do list is the key first step to being productive, since you need it to move on to other planning stages, like using the Eisenhower matrix to prioritize tasks or Kanban to organize them. And to make a good to-do list, try using the 1-3-5 rule, which is designed to keep your daily schedule more manageable—and thus more achievable. What is the 1-3-5 rule of productivity?The 1-3-5 rule acknowledges that in a typical day, you just don’t have tim…

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 (dow…

On Tuesday morning, much of the internet was inaccessible. If you tried to follow your feeds on X, or engage with ChatGPT, you were only met with error messages. Compare those error messages to one another, however, and you'd likely notice a similar name affixed to them all: Cloudflare. Cloudflare's massive Tuesday morning outage had sweeping implications for much of the web. While it's not clear what caused the outage at this time, we do know whether the outage was responsible for a website's downtime. (When an error page says "Cloudflare: Error," it's not difficult to track down the source of the problem.) As Cloudflare offers web infrastructure services to a huge numb…

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…

Google has officially launched its Gemini 3 Pro model, and for the first time, it's already making its way directly to the public, without making you wait months after the announcement to actually get your hands on it. On top of introducing a few new features, Google says the model has the typical increased accuracy, but also, that it finally cuts down on some of the excessive people-pleasing flattery that drives me nuts when using AI. The catch? Most features are paywalled, and one is still in the oven. For the more obvious improvements, Google says Gemini 3 Pro is at the top of LMArena with a score of 1501 points, while also demonstrating "PhD-level reasoning" on Humani…