tip Archives · AE Technology Group

Productivity Tip

You are only given so many hours in the day to get your daily work completed, so it is important that you are able to make the most of the time you are given at work.

If you find yourself becoming distracted daily by various websites, files that are not organized, and an email inbox that is always full, we want you to consider these productivity tips so you can manage your time better and so you can remain as productive and effective as possible.

How Much Work Are You Completing?

One of the things we would encourage you to do is track how much work you are completing on a daily basis. There are various extensions that you are able to download that will record the websites that you frequent the most. You can also track how much time you are not at your computer.

Running the browser extension or the mobile app will provide you with information about your productivity. If you discover that you are not spending as much time on your work as you should be, you will be more likely to make the needed adjustments on how your time is managed.

If you and your co-workers are spending too much time on social media or other websites that are holding you back from remaining productive, it may be a wise idea to block access to those websites.

If it is not a problem for employees to take breaks and use social media during the day, there are applications and browser extensions that will allow workers to access those websites, but the time will be restricted.

Become Clutter-Free

One of the best ways for you to increase your productivity and your output is by deleting files and folders you no longer need, uninstalling programs you are no longer going to use, and effectively organizing your documents into folders that you label. This will make it much easier for you to find your work, and this will also improve the performance on your computer.

When it comes to your email inbox, you will be able to prioritize your messages based on the importance. Once you filter out the messages that are not important, you will finally have an inbox that is clutter-free and spam-free.

These are only a few things you can do in order to remain productive on a daily basis.

If you are looking for more ideas on how you can get more out of your technology and remain productive, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

productivity tip

tip of the day maximizing your start menu

Did you love the start button functionalities from Windows 7, but dislike what happened with Windows 8 and Windows 10? We’ve got a hot tip for you that returns that feature with multiple options that you can tweak to your hearts content. It’s a shell replacement program called Classic Shell, which gives you that awesome Windows 7 start menu that we all knew and loved with both new and old functionality.

Go to http://www.classicshell.net/ to download the software to your computer so that we can get started. The program is no longer being actively developed by the original creator, but not to worry! Classic Shell has been around for many years with many features and solid stability that it will be good well into the future. Once you get the program installed you can immediately see it by pressing your start button like you always do… cool huh? If you right click on the new start button you will see the new settings for the Classic Start Menu. Right click and go to Settings to get into the real fun. By default you will see the basic options for you to poke around in, but if you are feeling adventurous you can check the box that says Show all settings. If you like to tweak everything then this is perfect for you, otherwise keep it simple and just do the basics. Play around with the colors, themes, styles, and settings until you love your new start button experience. We rely on the start menu so much, so why not give it a splash of your own style and enjoy that awesome Windows 7 style button.

Once you get everything setup to your exact liking you do not have to worry about losing all of your hard work if something were to go wrong! In the options menu for Classic Shell there is a Backup button you can press to make a file backup of all the settings you just changed. Hit the Save to XML file option and save that backup file anywhere on the disk drive so that it will not get lost. Better yet… transfer that file to one of your cloud storage accounts so that it will never get lost. Some examples of cloud storage services would include Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box. Any of those will be the perfect place to keep your start menu settings online forever! When you are ready to restore that file just go to the Backup button and hit Load from XML file to get back up and running.