MR. SENSEI - NEVER ENDING INSIGHT

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Google, Amazon and Facebook smart home devices are designed to listen to and respond to your commands. Typically, they just interact when you say, "magic word" like "OK, Google" or "Hey, Google."

However, these virtual assistants always listen.

If that makes you feel uncomfortable, there are a few cheap tricks to stop your smart-home device from listening to you all day.

Switch off microphones on computers if you don't use them or if you don't want them to snoop for a short time.

Here's how to stop your virtual assistants to listen:

Amazon Echo

Alexa's Echo speakers are fitted with a microphone-off toggle that you can switch off and on. When pressing the button, mic power is withdrawn, and the red light is activated.

Google Home, Home Mini, Nest Mini, Home Max and Google Nest Wi-Fi

On the Google assistant, push the mute button on the side of the device to on and off.

Slide the button next to the charging cable on the Google Nest Mini as well as the Google Home Mini. The button will illuminate the orange colour when the mic is switched off.

Slide the Toggle backwards on the Google Home Max. When the mic is turned off, the toggle will show orange colour.

On Google Nest Wi-Fi, slide the toggle beside the power cord. The toggle shows orange when the microphone is off.

Didn't want to turn off the mic? To take a little break from your virtual assistant, enable the Google Home app, press preferences, then digital well-being, and follow the planning directions.

Siri

Like the Echo, Siri is always alert, even though you forgot your iPhone. In iOS 8, Apple launched the "Hey Siri" wake phrase to call Siri without even touching your iPhone. Turning on this feature means your iPhone's microphone is always listening, waiting for the word "Hey Siri."

Apple says this is done remotely on the phone, so your iOS the system will not start recording your voice before you hear "Hey Siri." After your request has been listed, it will send the audio file to Apple's servers for extraction. But if you still having a doubt, then you don't have to fully disable Siri to avoid the "Hey Siri" function. Here's the fastest way to turn off "Hey Siri:" Navigate to Settings > > General > > Siri on your iOS device, then switch "Hey Siri" off.

Cortana

Like others on this list, Cortana will answer questions, scan, set schedules, and open applications. The wake expression is "Hi Cortana." Like others, Cortana caused concern. Here's how to turn off "Hey Cortana" on your Windows computer, pick the Laptop icon in the right column, press Settings, then switch off "Hey Cortana."

Facebook Portal

To toggle off the portal camera or mic, slide the toggle on top of the portal all the way to the left. A red light warns you the mic and camera are off.

Slide the toggle on top of Portal's frame into center position to turn off the camera. You'll see a closure over the camera lens when you turn off the camera.

On Portal+ and Portal (Gen 1), tap the circle button above your computer. A red light on your Portal front informs you when the mic and camera are switched off. You can also use a camera cover to protect your Portal camera if you don't use the device.

Nowadays, we do almost everything within a browser. Like stream videos write essays, surf the net, edit photos and severe slowdowns within this main bit of software can have a significant impact on how much you can do. These are the reasons your browser slows down. Therefore, it best for you to repair it immediately.

First, news sites are becoming increasingly complex: more interactive elements, more rendering graphics, more notifications, and yes, more advertising, tracking, and analytics. All this mass puts our browsers and system resources underneath more demands... That is, maybe it's not just your web browser that's slow, it's the PC too.

Then there are these routines of lining up browser tab after browser tab in our regular site journey— note links, articles we usually try to get back to, and all the applications we need at our disposal. One mobile, one music page, one social media feed... It's all piles up.

Between each browser tab eventually needing lots of data to be ping-ponged at once, and can perform a lot of processing, it's no wonder browsers will start sucking precious RAM. Open Windows Task Manager or macOS Activity Monitor, and you may be a little overwhelmed by how much room Chrome or Baidu Browser takes up.

But in some respects, this isn't a concern. All this use of RAM helps make the internet run faster — modern browsers like to keep separate tabs in their own allotted space, so if one crashes, the others aren't affected. They also want to use some tricks (such as pre-loading pages) to make the browsing experience smoother. All very easy, but all RAM-needed.

Regarding your browser's slowdown, high RAM usage only really matters if your browser runs out of it — then your computer may start to use the (much slower) hard drive within your system to find a way to deal. All the RAM your browser uses to keep it running fast and stable... Until RAM's overwhelmed.

Note that browsers can perish from sluggishness just as possible as computers. How many plugins and add-ons are currently attached to your browser? And how many of these you actually use? As helpful as these extensions might be, they mean even more requests on your browsers and their device assets.

All these factors can contribute to causing a slow browser, and I haven't even addressed malware yet. When something illegal happened already taken root on your computer, either as a fishy app or as an extension within the browser itself, you could see slowdowns as it unleashes its havoc (whether trying to inject advertisements into your browser or cryptocurrencies into your system).

How to speed up your web browser?

That's the thing... So, how to make it faster? The first is to restrict your web surfing activity — which may not be a horrible idea in terms of efficiency and concentration. Just keep open the tabs you want at any specific point, perhaps bookmarking those you wish to return to.

Many extensions can make a difference: Chrome cluster lets you group tabs automatically, then close and reopen groups on request (so you don't always have to hold it open). Chrome's Great Suspender simply suspends tabs you don't regularly use, while Chrome's OneTab expands on that concept and introduces many additional features (such as tab grouping).

Firefox's OneTab is still accessible if you prefer Mozilla's browser. As far as Firefox gets, we like Firefox's Total Suspender that, you know, suspends inactive tabs. Tab Manager Plus is worth a look, too, allowing you to stop flooding your browser with so many tabs and windows.

And the browsers itself are getting a lot better too— Chrome engineers were developing a Tab Freeze feature for upcoming browser updates, where it froze the tabs automatically after five minutes of not using them, reducing the stresses on your computer (and battery life, if applicable).

You can also probably switch to desktop versions of some applications (such as Slack and Spotify) instead of having online versions open all day. Such services will still need access to the web but will run separately from your browser, taking some weight off the back of your computer.

I've also suggested some plugins, but it's also possible that the more extensions you have on top of your app, the quicker it'll run — open the extension list of your browser and see if there's any accumulating webpage that you can dispense safely. For example, in Chrome, select More Tools and Plugins from the menu; in Firefox, select extensions from the ‘more tools,’ then ‘Extensions,’ to find the screen you want.

Or, more importantly, consider updating your RAM to give your browser a little more breathing room when it comes to handling pages and tabs. It's not really a hard job or costly upgrade depending on your laptop or desktop— a fast site or YouTube search for your computer program and "upgrade RAM" will give you some idea of what's entangled.

Malware issue is tackled easily — make sure you have some useful security software installed on your system and keep it up to date. These days, the tools that built-in into Windows and macOS offer sufficient basic protection, but there's no harm in investing in extra software, especially if you think your system could also already irreparably damaged down the line.

Make sure your software is up-to-date with the latest releases, which should implement the developers ' new enhancements and bug fixes. Nowadays, it's difficult not to maintain your browser updated, so we'll assume you're doing it anyway — but if you ignore updates, just be prepared for your PC doomsday.

Eventually, the bugfixes you could get from cleaning up the browser cache is debatable, but sometimes it can make a difference — giving back your computer and the sites it operates with a clean slate and deleting any files that might get corrupted or bloated. For instance, on the Chrome Settings tab, you need to select Advanced then Clear browsing data, while on the Firefox Options section, it's below Privacy & Security and Clear cache. Although, you could use clean cache add-on or extensions that can save your time to speed up your beloved sluggish browsers.

The browser bookmarks may have articles you don't ever go to read or places that you've overlooked for a long time, but bookmarks can be used more productively to save ten useful URLs that are stored in your app and help you do more and faster online.

1) Create new documents in Google Docs

Google provides handy web links to make new Google Docs (docs.new), sheets (sheets.new), and slides (slides.new), which saves them time and difficulty to load drive and to make new files. Recently Google introduced a new Google Keep shortcut, too (notes.new) to add a new message to your browser bookmarks.

2) Build your own private Twitter

Twitter lists are among the great features of the software. You can bookmark the file and display a stream of tweets from only that select group of accounts if you create a list of different Twitter accounts (follow this link, then click the new list key, top right).

3) Jump to your active Slack threads

If you work for a big company, you have a fair chance of using Slack, and Slack has an excellent web app (in addition to the desktop and smartphone applications). You can bookmark many different parts of Slack on the web (but the URL will be personal for you), for instance by tapping All unread in the preference pane at left and bookmarking this page.

4) Save advanced searches

Accumulating an in-depth search, whether on Google, Twitter, and Wikipedia, or elsewhere, can take precious minutes in your day, so if you are looking a lot, save it in a bookmark so you can get back to it quickly. You could even have a search bookmarks folder, with large images of the change to Twitter Change mentions.

5) Compose blog posts more quickly

If you want to bookmark different parts of your blogging system–not least the screen on which you can create a new blog–on WordPress, Blog, Tumblr, and whatever CMS is published (these links are unique to your environment, but has to be pretty easy to find).

6) Jump around YouTube

When you make much use of YouTube in your day-to-day internet activities, bookmarks may save you a lot of time. For example, you may save URLs directly to search YouTube or to link to your channels. If you need to refer to a section of a movie regularly, you can also connect to specific timestamps in YouTube videos.

7) Find out what’s new

The bookmarks can provide you with a fast shortcut for anything new in your world's new Android applications, or recently updated Dropbox files, or new Chrome extensions, or the latest Spotify songs. If you look at headlines, think about adding a bookmark to save the next time you have to search with a few clicks.

8) Jump around Wikipedia

You have plenty of Links that make Wikipedia navigation easier, from online articles to Wikipedia searches. For example, you can find information here recently and switch to a random article on Wikipedia here. You can also bookmark a reference to events from today's history and the latest Wikipedia posts.

9) Check your unread messages in Gmail

If you dare to deal with the rampant words that are unread in your Gmail inbox, then this bookmark is going to do the trick for you (if you are signed in already). You can bookmark any search in Gmail quickly to get back to it–unread emails older than one-year starred emails or messages in your draft folder can get bookmarked.

One of the most frustrating things about browsing websites today is the constant block of advertising that appears in different formats when you try to see the actual content. Fortunately, Google Chrome introduces a secret reader mode that enables you to access the website's plain text version, without supporting announcements or pop-ups.

Enabling the Feature

Google borrowed the idea for the feature from the existing Firefox browser configuration. Instead of the feature disabled by default, Chrome allows you to trigger the feature manually on your flags tab.

Here are the steps to enable hidden reader mode in Google Chrome:

First, make sure you run Chrome 75 or higher as the option is not part of earlier browser versions and then take these following steps:

1. Type chrome:/flags on the Chrome address page and press Enter. You will go to the Flags tab in Chrome. That is the browser section that includes more advanced features not yet fully mature to merge into Chrome's current feature line-up.

2. Check for the "Enable Reader Mode" option.

3. When you found the Reader Mode option, select on the flag next to it to switch it from the' Normal' to' Standardized.'

Optionally, a more practical way of activating the feature is to reach the Chrome address bar by type chrome:/flags/#enable reader mode and Press enter.

4. Now your app has updated its settings. To make the changes successful, quit your browser and logging on again.

Go to the website with the advertisements and pop-ups you want to stop. Open the overflow set menu at the top right corner of the page identified by the three points and search for the "Distill" button. Tap on it.

You can now access a streamed-down version of the site, which removes ads automatically to allow you to view the actual content in peace.

If you wish to go back to the original version of the page, just hit the undo arrow at the top left corner, and you can restore the website.

Things to Remember

The Secret Reader feature does have some effects on your browsing habits that you must take into account before the feature is enabled. First, some sites may not be able to view their content if Chrome blocks all of the ads and pop-up windows on its website. As the feature is still in a development stage, it can always begin or stop working entirely in the middle of a web browsing session.

Conclusion

The hidden reader feature is a way of circumventing the assertion of so many websites that put hundreds of advertisements in only one article or show a single video. Like all flags, the Hidden Reader option is still not bug-free but works very well in many kinds of web pages.

Have you ever bought into the idea that you have to work under the sun all the hours to be productive?

If so, then probably your day will look like this...

You wake up first at dawn, get to your workplace super soon, and start working. If you have lunch, you decide to skip it and choose to eat at your desk so that you can continue working. While your coworkers start leaving at the end of the day, you stay late while you try to complete all your tasks and assignments in vain.

You're excited about what you feel you're doing for a couple of months. But over time, you realize you aren't as successful as you think, so you fight to keep up with the hectic.

If you're truthful, that you don't make any drastic improvements within a year, you will be burned out.

What’s the Connection Between Minimalism and Productivity?

One thing to grasp is that the connection between minimalism and productivity is unknown (but definite).

If you don't understand minimalism, think of it this way:

Execute a project as easy as possible.

This could include finding a way to deal effectively with your documents or how to give priority to essential duties that can ignored. It can even mean 100 percent concentration on a particular task.

Minimalism aims to facilitate your work... and make it more productive!

As an example, you may find that you can do this in half the time that it has taken you before if you have streamlined the way you create reports. All it required was initial time and creativity to find ways to make the task as easy as possible.

If you're running out of time at work, take a step back and start looking for ways to make your job simpler. Any task you simply can save a considerable amount of time (especially if measured over periods of weeks and months).

Despite what you learned in school or university, minimalism and productivity are fundamentally connect with each other.

8 Ways Minimalism Can Boost Your Work Productivity

So how can you apply a minimalist method to your work?

Now, let's take a look.

Write a daily to-do list.

Begin your professional day with a to-do list (either on a note or via an app). It takes just a few minutes to outline what you want to do in the day to come. And how this simple task can liquefy your ideas and help schedule your fantastic day.

Identify essential tasks.

Once your to-do list is finished, look more closely. Do you have two or three tasks to complete today? If so, could you identify them? In most cases, critical tasks jump into your to-do list. Ensure that you mark them as VVT (Very Vital Tasks!).

Cut non-essential tasks.

See your to-do list for a second time. Are there activities you have listed that you really don't have to do? You may have listed some meetings, for example –but are they all really urgent? When you take a limited view of your to-do list, you will be sure to find items you can ditch off your list.

Learn to focus and defeat distractions.

You have to start understanding strong focus to be a practical minimalist. When interruptions can not be avoided (like those of loud conversations in an open-plan workplace), then by developing up a strong mental focus, any distraction will no longer bother you!

Turn tasks into daily habits.

Daily habits can be unbelievably powerful. They can break down complicated tasks and convert them into regular treatments! For example, you can work in a hotel and have to clean the block of flats in and out every week. You will need one hour to complete the cleaning. Alternatively, you can create a regular exterior cleaning routine for 10 minutes every day. This method is simpler and much more pleasant than working on the job for a full hour. It will also make it a habit for you, so you wouldn't have to force yourself to accomplish it.

Stretch time.

Are you aware that time can be stretch? This is indeed the case. Let's say I give you three hours to create a presentation of Google Slides. You start the job, and if you're like other people, somewhere around the three-hour mark you can finish it. Now try visualize if I told you that you had to build it in 90 minutes instead of three hours. Guess what, you could do that! That's really what I mean by maximizing time. Give yourself less time to execute the tasks to save this valuable resource.

Be aware of the Pareto Principle.

You may not be aware of the term Pareto, but I'm sure you heard about the 80/20 term. Well, it's a similar thing. This rule says that only 20% of our efforts will produce 80% of our results. From the opposite angle, 80% of our efforts will only lead to 20% of our achievements! The key is to be aware of the 20% of actions that produce most of our results. Identify these actions, concentrate on them, and increase your productivity.

Take regular breaks.

When you have many activities and plans ahead of you, it is daunting to ignore breaks (including lunch). Evidence has shown that the staff who take normal regular breaks are more successful than people who fail. There are a few explanations for regular breaks supported by evidence, including the fact that they help us keep focusing on ourselves, help us recall information, and help us reassess our priorities. Don't let your coworkers force you to continue working. Take regular breaks and then see your performance increase immediately.

So let's begin to add these minimalist methods to your life. You will be shocked by how much more comfortable you are and how much more successful you are!

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