One thing I struggled with when starting college was productivity. I know a lot of students are used to working on paper assignments and haven’t had the experience working on a computer to know how to optimize their working time.
Productivity and Posture
The first step when setting up a workspace is proper sitting and table arrangements. Many students lay on their bed or the couch. They work on a laptop on their lap or the edge of the bed. Some may put their laptop on the edge of the couch or lay on their belly. While that may have worked for a little bit in high school on the occasional project. It will lose you a lot of time on the frequent longer assignments in college. Sitting upright and at a table is important. If you are on a budget go to Goodwill and see what is available. Ask your family if they have anything they don’t want. All you need to start out a more productive posture is a comfortable chair and a table or desk. A kitchen chair or table will work as long as you can sit comfortably and you have a good typing angle.
You should be able to sit and place your hands on your keyboard/laptop at a ninety-degree to one-hundred-degree angle. The screen should be angled up so it is a straight line to your eyes. This will help reduce eye strain and decrease the time it takes you to read things off of the screen. If possible a computer tray under the surface of the desk is even better. It stresses your wrists and hands much less. Even if you are not doing everything on the computer there are big advantages to using a desk. A heavy flat surface gives you a much more accurate writing experience and makes drawing more enjoyable. Information on wrist injury due to poor typing angle.
Computer-Enhanced Workflow
When I started college I was working off of an old laptop and had to go to the campus and use a computer there to get anything real done. I had a hard time because I was working from a tiny chair in my bedroom with a laptop. The only productivity improvement I had was a little laptop stand that let me use a mouse.
Depending on what kind of work you have to do will determine what you will need to be most productive. If you are just doing writing assignments think about getting a keyboard. It might not seem like something you need. “I already have a keyboard on my laptop” You may think. I would have agreed with you before I got a proper keyboard. A proper keyboard made for typing like a model M increases your typing speed quite a lot especially after you have practice. Another benefit is that it makes typing long assignments much more enjoyable. Mechanical typing feel cushions your fingers on the downstroke and prevents the finger pain caused by repetitive keystrokes on a shallow-travel laptop keyboard.
If you have to do many different kinds of assignments as I do varying from writing, to the animation you might see an advantage with a second monitor. You could put your E-textbook on it or spread out your tools and files for an adobe project. The options are limitless but they will all save you at least one action every time you would have needed to change between windows.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pj Heckert
Student Author - Spring 2021
