Three things before Friday
Sit down to a morning’s worth of odd jobs on a computer — something to read, something to keep, something to send — and do the lot of it without asking anybody and without a single instruction on the screen.
Twenty-four lessons, and each of them was one errand on its own. This is three of them at once, which is what an actual morning at a computer looks like.
Here is a practice machine, a job with three parts to it, and no order they have to be done in. Nothing on the screen will tell you which window to open first, and you may have as many of them open at a time as you like.
Key points
- Take something out of an email and put it where you would look for it in a year.
- Send a document on to somebody, and know it went with the message rather than after it.
- Set a screen up so that an evening at it is comfortable instead of exhausting.
What to remember
- That is what a morning at a computer actually is — several small things, none of them related, all done with the same handful of moves. Downloads is where everything that arrives lands, on every machine there is, which is why it fills up and why it is the first place to look for something you cannot find. Attach sends a copy and never moves your original, so there is nothing you can do to a document by emailing it. And the size of the writing on your own screen is a setting rather than a compromise: it is nobody’s business but yours.
- Honestly — how was that?
Try this
Find the text size on your own computer — Settings, then Display on a Windows machine, or System Settings then Displays on a Mac — and move it one notch up for a week. Nothing breaks and nothing runs off the edge; everything else moves over to make room.
Practice: Three things before Friday. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.