While it might seem like a quirky idea, using a Solar Powered Laptop Charger comes with a number of benefits and can save you incredible amounts of time. It can be just the thing that an on-the-go business professional needs to keep productivity up.

Aside from the obvious benefit of being environmentally friendly and a good way to get clean energy, many devices are very portable, which makes it possible to charge your laptop from just about anywhere you can see sunlight. When you don’t have to waste time sitting around waiting for your laptop to charge, you can be on the move, getting things done. Don’t let travel stop you from working because you can’t get power – with the Solar Gorilla Laptop charger, you can charge your laptop while traveling. The device is powerful enough for continuous usage, so you have virtually unlimited power. You can work from anywhere, and never lose time due to a low or empty battery.

The Solar Gorilla Laptop Charger can connect to any Mac or Windows laptop, as well as a number of different cell phones. It provides enough power to charge a cell phone completely in just a couple of hours, or to run a laptop. If you can get access to sunlight, whether outside or near a window, then you have all the power you need to stay productive, while also working cost effectively.

Image: Ed Yourdon

An iPad is a great tool to help you with work projects, do research and keep up with your schedule – and a multitude of other tasks that can help you work smarter. Knowing a few ways to save time while using your iPad will make it even more useful.

i) Use Autofill: You can fill in forms automatically by enabling the Autofill feature. In the settings menu choose Safari, Autofill and select “use contact info”. Then your iPad will use the information in your contacts list to fill in information automatically, saving you lots of typing.

ii) Add a Web Page on the Home Screen: You can add an icon for a frequently used website to the main screen for quick access. Simply press the “+” while you are in Safari and then select “add to home screen”. Then you can go directly to that website instead of searching through your Safari bookmarks.

iii) Insert Information Quickly: When you are typing and you make a mistake don’t press backspace, just touch the word containing the mistake and a magnifying glass comes up so that you can easily insert a correction.

iv) Add Apps to the Dock: Instead of having only four apps at the bottom of the home screen you can add two more for instant access. Press any icon and hold your finger there until it wiggles. Then you can drag it to the dock at the bottom of the home screen.

v) Search with Spotlight: Spotlight search will find information on your iPad. Flick to the right on the main Home screen. When Spotlight opens type in a keyword and it will search your iPad. This allows you to easily go to a particular song, contact or calendar event.

Image: bfishadow

Image via Free Games Online

Think time management and you think work. How can you accomplish the tasks you’ve been assigned within the nine-to-five grind – so you can go out and drink beer with your conscience clear? Doing all your boss has asked isn’t always easy. However much you plan, organize, set goals and prioritize, like end of level bosses in an interminable video game, there are hundreds of obstructions to effective time management – and the boss of bosses has got to be the big D: distractions. It’s ironic, then, that there exist, within the wonderful world of the web, numerous time management games busying themselves right now, not only distracting poor, innocent members of the workforce with better things to do – but positively driving them to distraction as well. Here are 7 time management games that are a total waste of time. Now get back to work!

7. Potion Bar

Image via Games.com

With the success of World of Warcraft and the fantasy genre more generally, it’s only natural that time management games should get in on the whole swords and sorcery bandwagon – or so it would appear when clicking on Potion Bar, a game that promises you’ll “plunge into the captivating world of magic and serve enchanted elixirs to many fanciful customers!” The problem is, those customers look more like rejects from the grunge movement than Legolas or Gimli, and you’ll be bored out of your brain before you can say “Frodo”. Instructed by a smug fat cat on a cushion, this game is all about cooking up cocktails with a range of weird and wonderful ingredients, while a steady flow of aggravated clients get annoyed by your incompetence. Potion Bar is probably meant to teach you skills like planning and prioritizing. It ends up driving you mad. You’ll need a real drink after this.

6. Burger Shop 2

Image via Shockwave

Ever wanted to be a manager at McDonald’s? Thought so. Well now’s your chance with Burger Shop 2, the time management game that’ll have you serving up meat patties, fries and an assortment of other fast food favourites to a slew of hungry, impatient customers. As the bacon, eggs, burgers and other cholesterol-loaded foodstuffs come flying down the conveyor belt, it’s your job to plate them up and get them out to the red check shirted clones waiting at the counter. Sound easy? It isn’t. But, if you can master “the art of food placement”, you’ll have taken your first step to building your own burger empire. You’ve got to be efficient as you go about your job, juggling which are your priority orders and which can wait – good time management skills it’s true – but at the end of the day you’re clicking your mouse to run a burger joint. Don’t waste your time.

5. Super Baby Sitter

Image via Candystand

Just what we want when we’ve got a bit of time to spare – or not: to be surrounded by hoards of screaming kids. The name of the game here is keeping your young charges content by providing for their every need – be it a toy, a diaper change or some milk from a bottle. Stay on the ball and all will be well, but let things slip and those lovable tots will make your life hell with the most dangerous weapon in a baby’s armory: the waterworks. Yes, when you hear those brats start crying you’ll wonder why you ever started playing this game. Oh yes, time management. If you can stick with it you’ll not only learn valuable parenting skills but a sense of separating out what’s urgent from what’s merely important – a method President Eisenhower supposedly practiced. You’ll need to be cooler than any president to cope with this ‘amusement’.

4. Farm Frenzy 3: Madagascar

Image via Free Games Online

It’s all the fun of the farm in this next time management game as you aid Scarlet in her bid to become an even bigger farming success than she became in the first and second installments of Farm Frenzy. In the first couple of levels of this popular, Madagascar-based number matters aren’t as manic as they’ll no doubt get the further you progress. You busy yourself tending to your guinea fowl, growing grass to feed them, going to the well to pump water for the plants, and collecting the eggs that are the fruits of your labor. You’ve got goals to follow, you’ve got to allocate your resources and you’ve got to monitor your activities – admittedly all valuable time management techniques. The problem is, get yourself addicted to this game and you won’t have any time to reap any of the real rewards life has to offer.

3. Beauty Resort

Image via Free Games Online

Who knew helping Heather run her own beauty resort could be so much fun? Not us until we tried it, loved the career change – and nearly lost our job when the boss caught us neglecting our real responsibilities. But we digress. As the game instructions say, “Work fast and carefully or the customers will get angry”. This ‘work’ basically involves clicking on your paying clients and plonking them in either the massage chair or the jacuzzi. You’re also instructed, “Don’t forget to clean” – ‘cleaning’ here taking the forms of clicking various icons. Other than that it’s just a matter of picking up the dollar bills and racking up the points. Does it help you with time management? Put it this way. While there’s some prioritizing and you have to plan on the hop, there’s certainly no time to make a task list. Verdict: another waste of time.

2. Jojo’s Fashion Show World Tour

Image via Shockwave

For the style gurus among us there’s Jojo’s Fashion Show, a time management game in which you take on the role of leading fashion designer Jojo Cruz. You’ll draw on all your mastery of chic technique as you embark on a tour that’ll see you hosting shows in every fashion capital in the world. Fabulous darling! In practice, this means dressing the pantie and bra clad models that are your canvas in a melange of different garments with styles names such as Gothic Loli and Kimono Krazy. Finding the right combination for clothing these twigs seems easy at first, but the process becomes ever more difficult as your time in the limelight lengthens. As with most of these games, it’s all about taking the right steps in the right order, but while they try to show you time management needn’t be boring, you’ll be yawning your appreciation before long.

1. Internet World

Image via Free Games Online

In Internet World you head up an internet club. Turning this virtual idea into something more visual, the game entails you – cast as a kind of god of all geeks – using pincers to place your evidently clueless guests where they want to go. How are you blessed with the power to read their minds? It comes courtesy of a bubble above their heads – proof that they’re not complete zombies. To the tune of maddening plinkety plonk music, more and more of these drones pull up in a big red bus, swarm in, and shuffle against one another as they wait to be picked up by your looming claw and taken to departments like Content Management and Email Marketing. Needless to say, the more guests arrive at the exhibition, the harder you job becomes. You can monitor and allocate all you like, but eventually you’ll crash, whether you’ve learned any time management skills or not.

Whether you have dual citizenship, a visa or a green card, or are just working abroad for several months at a time, it’s easy to make a living in the United States while enjoying a comfortable life in India – or, potentially, anywhere else in the world. This allows you to earn in dollars and turn your income into rupees, for a cost-friendly lifestyle in the East. Not only is this arrangement possible, but thanks to modern communications technology, many professionals are already living it. The following tips will help you make this jet-setting lifestyle your own to enjoy for a lifetime.

A work visa will allow you to move abroad for months at a time. During this time you can work in the career you already enjoy while saving your money. Alternatively, you can choose freelance careers such as online content writing. A popular way to earn US dollars in India involves setting up blogs and websites, charged with search engine optimization and revenue sharing ads such as Google AdSense, Clicksor or AdBrite. Each time a visitor sees your website you earn USD, which can be converted to rupees from your bank account later.

There are literally countless online positions advertised on job websites everyday. You can locate many such job websites by performing a search with the words “online jobs”. You can expect to be presented with plenty of job websites to choose from. Once you go to a specific job website and join the program, you can specify that you are only interested in online jobs headquartered in the US. Alternatively, you could remotely manage your own business, directing sales and distribution from the other side of the world. In both cases, if you wanted to partially or entirely automate your business, you could leave administrative tasks in the hands of outsourcers, allowing your business to keep bringing in income while you enjoy your new home.

You may have to make some major time management adjustments if you are new to online work. You will most likely have to manage your own time, keep up with scheduled deadlines, and designate a specific location in your home to devote to your online profession.

By managing a Western based business from the East, and earning more while spending less, you really could live like a millionaire on a relatively modest income.

Image: MACSURAK

If you work in a sector where you need to keep up to date with the latest news, finding the information that you require can become a job in and of itself. This is especially true if you have a list of websites that you need to get information from. You may find that you visit a great deal of sites to check for updates, only to find that there is no new information. This is where an RSS feed can come in handy and save you time by making your browsing more efficient.

An RSS feed is an excellent way to save time. RSS feeds are a tool, allowing you to bundle news from various websites and read it all in one place. This way you don’t need to waste time bouncing from site to site to find the information you are looking for. RSS stands for ‘really simple syndication’. RSS feeds are similar to a subscription service but they are entirely free – an RSS reader makes it simple. If you need to stay informed in your job, whether searching for general or industry specific news, this is an excellent time saver. You can also get RSS feeds on your cell phone, if you need to catch up while on the go.

By collecting updates from core news sources in one place, an RSS feed makes it easy to stay up to date without wasting time looking for the information. Whereas before you might browse the web in a more general and disorganized way, RSS feeds allow for focused, efficient browsing to target in on exactly what you need to know. Anybody who needs to be up to date on the latest information will find that an RSS feed is an excellent time saver and a great way to optimize their work day.

Image: Colleen AF Venable