Alexa helps us with the day to day when we do housework. It is quite convenient to automate actions such as cleaning with a robot vacuum cleaner or turning lights on and off. But you can still get more out of Alexa. If you work from home, take note. Here are 5 Alexa features that you can take advantage of to be more productive or focus better on your work:
Reminders
Working from home sometimes has its downsides. An unforeseen event at home can make you lose concentration and forget that you are working. Or the opposite. You get so involved in work that you even forget to feed your cat.
With Alexa Reminders , you can set your own breaks. If you take a break every day at 11:00 AM and eat at 2:00 PM, Alexa can alert you so you don’t miss a beat.
As you will see later, you can even set this as a routine so that it repeats automatically every day of the week.
Calendar
You can associate Alexa with Google , Apple , and Microsoft calendars. Both personal and corporate. Thanks to this, you will be able to ask Alexa for events related to your calendar:
“Alexa, what’s on my calendar?”
“Alexa, when is my next meeting?”
“Alexa, schedule an event for 5pm tomorrow”
“Alexa, cancel my meeting”
This is one of the most unknown functions of Alexa. We are sure that once you get the hang of it, it will totally change the way you work.
Listen to music to keep your attention
If you concentrate better listening to music, Alexa can serve you a huge catalog. If you pay for Amazon Music, you will have access to all the songs you want. Otherwise, you will also have at your disposal a good catalog of musical radio stations of classical music, jazz, LoFi…
Ask Alexa quick questions
Quick questions will help you save time . Instead of searching on Google, you can ask the assistant all kinds of questions to buy time:
- Calculations : “Alexa, what is 0.21 times 995?”
- Unit Conversions – “Alexa, how many centimeters are 45 inches?”
- Dates – “Alexa, what year was Microsoft founded?”
- Others : definitions, current data, laws…
Automate the environment with routines
Alexa routines are used so that you can make your own fully customized home automation programs . They can be executed automatically or after a specific command.
When it comes to working from home, Alexa routines can be quite useful. For example, when we sit at our desk, instead of turning on each device, we can write a command so that everything we usually use turns on automatically.
But this is just an example. You can create as many as you need. The limit is set by creativity .
For example, suppose you make use of the Pomodoro technique . You could set timers every certain number of minutes, but it’s even simpler. Simply create a routine and configure it like this:
- Trigger : “Alexa, start Pomodoro Technique”
- Actions :
- Say ‘Pomodoro Technique: Started’.
- wait 25 minutes
- Say ‘Break time’
- wait 5 minutes
- Say ‘End of break’