Odds are if you are a home-based business owner or entrepreneur, you don’t have a quality control manager hovering over your desk each month, making sure you are taking proper care of your equipment. Instead, you have other things to worry about – like playing salesman, manager, bookkeeper, admin assistant and receptionist all at once.
But just like you don’t wait until you are dehydrated to drink water, nor should you wait until your equipment crashes and burns before you pay it a little attention.
Below are five bad tech habits that most people are guilty of:
1. Poor ergonomics. We all know countless studies have shown how bad it is for the body to sit at improper angles, staring at a computer all day. Everything from your keyboard to the correct bend at your knees when sitting in a chair can adversely affect your body. Use this checklist to make sure you’re doing things right.
2. Not cleaning your equipment. You touch your phone and your keyboard countless times a day, after doing countless activities. So that means germs and grime build up and create a cesspool of bacteria. Just make sure you regularly wipe down your tech gadgets once a week with anti-bacterial cleaner.
3. Not backing up data. A major no no! This should be a standard weekly process. Your computer or network can crash at anytime and some data may disappear forever - something you just cannot afford. Back it up!
4. Never getting up to move around. Sitting in a chair for long periods of time can lead to blood clots in your legs and weight gain. Every 30 minutes try to get up and stretch, or walk to the other side of the room and back.
5. Not properly shutting down equipment. It’s easy to just close the lid of your laptop and carry on with other business, but that action will lessen the life of your computer. It’s better to put it to sleep as that will halt all action and keep it from overheating. But don’t forget to completely shut it down at the end of the day so it can have a good night’s sleep, too.
Who is guilty of these bad habits? I’m definitely guilty of just shutting my laptop lid, so I will be putting it to sleep from now on. Stay tuned next week for a few more bad habits!