Workplace Tech Habits That Boost Device Efficiency and Longevity
If you’ve ever been in an intense, high-priority brainstorm session with your coworkers over Microsoft Teams, you know the worst thing that could possibly happen at a critical moment is the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSoD). Following a few best practices can keep those nightmare scenarios at bay and boost your device’s longevity significantly.
Why Prioritizing Device Longevity Pays Off
Whether you’re in a fast-paced hybrid office setup with half the team working from home, or you’re in a traditional office workplace, it’s easy to get caught up in the flow and ignore your device’s long-term health.
That’s a critical mistake.
Prioritizing longevity goes beyond productivity benefits. It actively reduces the rate of burnout, keeps teams collaborative, and saves on needless spending.
Read: Beyond Gadgets: The Technology That Quietly Shapes Daily Life
Shrinking Device Lifespans
We’re living in a time where electronics’ lifespans are continuously getting shorter, as shown by a European consumer study:
“Researchers…noted that the proportion of all units sold to replace a defective appliance grew from 3.5% in 2004 to 8.3% in 2012.”
– Susanna Ala-Kurikka, for The Guardian
Prioritizing device efficiency and longevity helps smaller businesses save thousands on replacing defective devices. This is also critical, considering devices tend to reach their end-of-life points faster when performing computationally intensive tasks for work, such as 3D modelling or building AI models.
A Productivity Penalty
A sluggish phone or laptop is undeniably annoying for an employee, but it also drains productivity. Whether you’re fiddling with a defective component or scrambling on Reddit looking for troubleshooting tips, every minute spent solving avoidable problems is a big productivity hit.
Conversely, consultancies like McKinsey find that a more productive and effective IT arsenal leads to more sustainable, faster revenue growth. Employees can collaborate faster, brainstorm ambitious ideas fearlessly, and do their best work without fear of running into technical roadblocks.
The Best Tech Habits That Boost Device Efficiency and Longevity
Keep Your Hardware and Software Current
Whether it’s using the right fast charger for your phone or slapping on a reliable cover and screen protector for your laptop, protecting your hardware should be your first priority. After all, no amount of following best practices can shield your work laptop from a nasty, unprotected fall.
This goes doubly for the software side. Updating your device firmware keeps you safe against new malware and all manner of digital threats, especially at a time when cyberattacks are at an all-time high. The best part? Doing this costs nothing.
Upgrade Strategically
If you’re working in a fast-paced environment where every millisecond of WiFi latency reduction or improvement in processing time matters, it can be so tempting to spring for a new stick of RAM that advertises better AI performance, or a new laptop featuring the latest string of buzzwords.
It’s also usually a bad idea.
Workplace upgrades should generally only happen after conducting a thorough tech audit that answers questions like:
- What do we need to achieve?
- What’s stopping us from hitting those goals?
- How much will an upgrade cost?
Rush in for an upgrade, and you could see slowdowns due to incompatibility and other issues.
Adopt Battery-Smart Habits
Whether it’s for your phone or laptop, the 80% golden rule should absolutely be followed in the workplace. Don’t let your device hit the 5% mark or run out of juice entirely before you plug it into a charger. Ideally, devices with lithium-ion batteries should be charged from 20% to 80%, and then unplugged.
Fast-charging is also perfectly acceptable and even recommended as long as you’re using either a first-party or a reliable third-party charger that supports your device. Phones are designed to accommodate only a certain amount of voltage, but overheating will gradually wear them down.
Follow a Routine Cleaning Plan
Busy workspaces are just about the best environment for dust bunnies, and yet many of us tend to overlook the one place where dust accumulation can make a real difference. Laptop chassis and desktop towers, in particular, are prone to massive build-ups of dust on internal components.
Cleaning doesn’t necessarily have to be a time-consuming process, either. Tools like a compressed air canister and a small brush with extended bristles are all you really need to clean out any workplace device.
P.S.: Give that keyboard a once-over too; it really needs it.
Use Built-in Tools To Monitor Device Health
Our phones and computers come with built-in health-monitoring devices, and they should be used. If you’re on iOS, use the battery health tracker to watch for reductions in maximum capacity. If an app is using excessive resources in the background, consider offloading it.
If you find yourself going between multiple devices for work, you might even want to automate this step. MacOS apps like Shortcuts can help you conduct device checks monthly, while Task Scheduler on Windows does the same thing (despite the unwieldy UI).
Schedule Breaks
Scheduled breaks aren’t just great for employees, they’re great for devices too. Components like CPU and cabinet fans are only rated for a certain number of repetitions, and leaving a device running–even if it isn’t doing anything–for extended periods will wear it down and shorten its lifespan.
Build a More Productive Workplace
Is fast charging bad for your phone? No, but a lack of attention to battery-smart habits, device health, and software updates is. Keep your devices current and follow a set maintenance plan to extend their lifespan and build a more productive workplace.