5 Ways to Maximize Your Productivity on a PC

calendar apps, Clipboard, keyboard shortcuts, monitor, Ophtek, pin apps, Productivity, , , , , ,
26
Oct 2021

There never seems to be enough hours in the working day, so maximizing productivity is crucial. But how exactly do you go about doing this on a PC?

Using a PC in the workplace has revolutionized the way in which we work. However, the sheer range of possibilities contained within a PC mean that it’s difficult to understand each one. It’s important, therefore, to get to grips with the techniques that will save you time and make life easier. Implementing these into your daily routines is hassle free and will make a difference almost instantly. Not only will this help you as an individual, but it will also benefit your organization. The question is, though, where do you start?

Maximizing Your Productivity

The 5 best ways to give your PC productivity a boost is by carrying out the following:

  1. Use a Calendar App: A lack of focus and planning is the biggest obstacle that productivity can face. But the modern business world is packed full of distractions. Accordingly, navigating your way through the day can feel like an uphill struggle. Thankfully, help is at hand from calendar apps such as those contained with Microsoft Teams and Outlook. These calendars allow you to plan your day and set reminders for crucial tasks e.g. attending meetings, completing reports and chasing suppliers.
  • Embrace Keyboard Shortcuts: Every second counts in the workplace and you can make significant time savings with keyboard shortcuts. These commands use a series of keyboard strokes to activate pre-programmed commands. Say, for example, you wanted to highlight an entire paragraph of text. You could do this manually by clicking your mouse and dragging the cursor down the page. Or, more quickly, you could place your cursor at the start of a paragraph and hold down Ctrl + Shift + down arrow for instant selection. There are thousands of shortcuts available, so investigate which ones are best for your daily needs.
  • Pin Apps to Your Taskbar: You will use certain apps more than others, so it’s important you have quick access to them. Unfortunately, searching through a crowded desktop or through the start menu can be frustratingly slow. However, by pinning your most popular apps to your taskbar, you can find and open them within seconds.
  • Use Clipboard History: The Clipboard feature – which allows you to save a section of text or an image to a PCs memory for later use – has been in place for decades. But it’s now more powerful than ever before. By turning on the Clipboard history feature, you can save multiple items. This means, for example, you can save a selection of images and texts from a website before moving into a Word document to paste them all, as opposed to moving backwards and forwards.
  • Install a Second Monitor: There may be a cost involved with installing a second monitor, but the benefits easily outweigh this small investment. With a second monitor you are effectively expanding your desktop. This means that you can view two important apps at once to allow seamless interactions e.g. copying details from an email on one screen into a database displayed on the other screen. It’s a strategy which will make working more comfortable and allow you to become more productive.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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The Best PC Shortcuts You Should Know

Customizeable mouse, keyboard shortcuts, Keyboards, Ophtek, PC Shortcuts, Productivity, , ,
02
Feb 2021

Anything that can increase your productivity is a godsend. If it’s a simple process it’s even better. And that’s exactly what you can do with a PC shortcut.

Working with a mouse and a keyboard at the same time can become a fiddly task. But, thankfully, much of this complexity can be removed by using PC shortcuts. When we say PC shortcut we’re not referring to the icons on your desktop that launch applications. We’re talking about quick tricks that you can execute in seconds to save you time. These mostly involve either the keyboard or the mouse and you should be able to start implementing them immediately.

Increasing Your Productivity

The best PC shortcuts you should know are:

  • Switching Apps: When you have numerous applications open it can be difficult to navigate your way between them with a mouse. However, if you hold down the ALT key and then tap the TAB key you can quickly switch between each application. A mini preview window will open in the center of the screen to make things as simple as possible.
  • Select a Paragraph: If you want to select an entire paragraph of text to move, copy or delete then you have two options. The first is to manually click and drag your mouse cursor over the entire text. The second, and much quicker, option is to do a triple click of the left mouse button anywhere on the paragraph.
  • Select Everything: If you want to select everything in, for example, a Word document, a text box in any application or even MS Paint, all you have to do is press and hold the CTRL key and then the A key. This will highlight everything instantly and allows you action further processes immediately.
  • Close Your Current Window: The most common way to close a window on your PC is by clicking the X icon in the top right corner. But sometimes this may not be visible or your mouse may not be working correctly. In these cases you can still close the window quickly by pressing and holding the ALT key and then the F4 key.
  • Rescue Your Closed Browser Tab: We’ve all closed a tab on our internet browser by mistake and not been able to remember the address. Rather than digging through your internet history, though, there’s a quick way to re-open that tab. In most internet browsers, if you click and hold the SHIFT key and then the CTRL key and finally the T key, your last closed tab will be re-opened.
  • Zoom In: There’s always a need to zoom in on documents and images, but finding the zoom function in an app isn’t always easy.  There is, however, a quick solution. If you hold down the control key and then move the scroll wheel of a mouse up and down then you should zoom in and out. This works in a wide range of applications such as MS Office, Chrome, Firefox and most graphic design software.

For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.

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