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OKAY! I admit it! I spend WAY too much time on my computer and on the Internet. I’ve got to balance that though with the knowledge that I make my living by working on computers, developing applications, designing websites, blogging and being active in a variety of social media outlets. But sometimes you really need a break don’t you? When do you call it time to unplug?

Taking a break for a few days from being plugged in. It’s a battle for me. Most of the time when I’m “attached” to the network I’m in the process of making money for my family. I think I do a good job of balancing work and play/family, but I do work a lot. For me I usually try to get it done after hours when the kids are in bed. In the summer that’s a little more difficult since the kids are up later and there seems to be more activity going on.

The best way for me to unplug is to get away and go somewhere where being connected to the machine is challenging. For me, that’s camping. Electricity and wi-fi are hard to come by when you’re out in the woods. Cell phones are frequently in roam which doesn’t allow me to connect for data transfer.

What do you do? Do you call “technology free” days or nights? How do you get away? Do you get away? Do you think it’s important? Let me know your thoughts.

Image: Modified flickr photo by Pulpolux

Microsoft Word is one of those applications that we’ve probably all used at some point in our lives. If you’re in the business world, odds are you’re probably using it on an almost daily basis. Being in business, having a way to get more work done in either the same or less amount of time is an underlying goals many of us probably shoot for in our work. That leads us to the question then.

Are you being as efficient at using Microsoft Word as you can be? Do you know many of the keyboard shortcuts you can take advantage of so you don’t have to move your hands off the keyboard and onto the mouse? It surprises me how many times I work with individuals and when I do even the simplest keyboard shortcuts I hear "How’d you do that?!"

The Internet4Classrooms.com website has some common Microsoft Word shortcuts that are the standards for use that you’ll probably find yourself using at least once almost every document you create.

There are shortcuts for quickly formatting your text, moving around your document, editing text and finding areas of text to reuse in other sections of your Word document.

It’s not just about keyboard shortcuts either. Do you find yourself always changing the default spacing, font, margins or other settings in your document before you really get started? Do you always insert a header/footer design or perhaps a company logo?

All of these things can be saved as preferences or automated to some degree. What would you like to know how to do? Let me know in the comments and I can work on putting together some tutorial posts to help you and share with the rest of our readers.

Image: Custom graphic by Jason Bean