Hey Steemit, first post here! I'm a digital freelancer and I figured a good entry would be to help my fellow internet-dwellers with some actionable tips to help improve your digital life.
If you spend more than a few hours per day in front of a screen, you're likely familiar with the problems of this particular lifestyle - eye strain, bad posture, lack of sunlight, easy distractions, and that unshakable feeling that you're more genetically suited to life hunting elk and chopping wood.
So what's a boy to do? There are many ways to improve your office lifestyle, and I've condensed a few helpful tips and tricks that I personally use in hopes that they help improve your life as much as mine. I'm not associated with any of these tools, I just think their damn useful.
1) F.lux - Reduce eye strain and get better sleep
I've personally used F.lux for about two years now and I couldn't live without it. It has greatly reduced strain on my eyes and helped me sleep better. The app syncs with your timezone and correspondingly decreases screen brightness over time. It's super lightweight and I've noticed no drag on my system, even while gaming. This is incredibly helpful for folks that do computer intensive work in the evenings, as the transition from screen to sleep can often be difficult. If you're doing design work, you can just toggle it off (and you should, otherwise you may design some weird colors). It's also 100% free - awesome.
2) Boomerang - Gmail plugin that allows scheduling of emails
This plugin has personally saved me so much time I can't actually quantify it. As a freelancer, I often find myself doing work super late into the evenings. But I don't want to bug my clients or potential clients at 2AM - it's impolite at best, and if a client has their notifications turned on, I might even be waking them up. Instead of that madness, you can just install the Boomerang plugin and use the "Send later" feature to schedule emails for times that are more appropriate for business hours.
3) Wallpaper Engine - Fancy, lightweight wallpapers
This plugin is more superfluous than the others on this list, but is really one of my favorites. It also costs money ($2.99 on Steam) but it's well worth the cost. Ditch your boring wallpapers for some 21st century living wallpaper that even interacts with your music through visualizations, or just makes your desktop battlestation look significantly better with a lazily spinning galaxy or DNA strand. With a large library and Steam workshop support, the possibilities here are endless. You can find out more about Wallpaper Engine here.
4) Crowdfire - Social media management
If you're a digital freelancer, chances are you are responsible for some social media accounts. These accounts can get overwhelming quickly, and the market has evolved some smart solutions to help folks like you. One of these solutions is Crowdfire which is free for a single account, and I highly recommend giving it a try. My favorite feature is the "unfollow" feature that tracks your non-followers and presents them in an easy layout so you can unfollow those freeloaders. It's also got cross-platform publishing and you can manage multiple accounts with a relatively affordable upgrade plan.
If you enjoy content like this, let me know and make sure to subscribe, upvote, write your representatives, and dream about me.
Cheers,
Chris