College Quick Tip: Turn Your WiFi Off to Stay Focused and Saved Battery Life

The advent of mobile computers becoming commonplace in the classroom is one that has brought much increased productivity and many other great advantages. However, having a notebook is also a portal to the vast internet which can be filled with a seemingly limitless number of distractions.

Be honest now — how many times have you browsed Facebook, or instant messaged friends in class (who they themselves are probably also in class)? You know the deal: the second your professor starts talking about something that is boring, you somehow subconsciously open a web-browser and before you know it, you are updating your Facebook status or checking out the lastest Lolcats.

A simple but effective way to prevent keep yourself from the ever tempting web is to toggle off your WiFi. Many computers have hardware switches (located somewhere on the notebook) which can be flipped to temporarily disable the wireless functions of your notebook. If not a physical switch, some notebooks have a key combination that can be pressed to toggle WiFi. Take a look up in the F-keys to see if you see anything that might look like it represents WiFi and try giving that a press (you’ll probably need to press a modifier key along with it, like Fn). If your computer doesn’t have either of these, you should be able to disable the WiFi through your notebook’s wireless connection manager.

This is an effective method because it makes 5 or 10 minute web browsing sessions less temping as you’d have to go through the task of turning the WiFi back on and waiting for your computer to reconnect to the web.

One great side effect of turning off your WiFi to stay focused is that it is also a great way to save battery life. Transmitting data over a wireless network with your computer is one of the larger power consumimg tasks that a notebook does. By turning off the WiFi you can save a noticeable amount of battery life.

But don’t limit yourself just when power saving is convenient. Use this tip even when you are plugged in. You can’t tell me that you’ve managed to avoid ‘web breaks’ where you have a 15 minute browsing session (every 15 minutes) while you are trying to get a big paper done. Turning off the WiFi will help you stay focused and get that paper finished and turned in on time.

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