An overworked freelancer asks: Could the right tech setup increase my income?

Greg Bruce thought an internet connection and a newish laptop were all a modern journalist needed. Noel Leeming’s resident tech expert kindly set him straight.

As a freelance journalist in a historically non-lucrative time to be in that profession, I must strive with all my being to wring every last dollar out of every hour spent at my desk. By necessity, I have become an income-maxxer.

That is why and how I found myself on the phone to Noel Leeming buyer and tech expert Luke Andrew. His job was to help me improve my tech setup and thereby help me make the money I need to feed my fast-growing children.

Honestly, I didn’t see how he was going to be able to help. I have a newish laptop, wireless mouse and wireless keyboard. What else could a modern journalist need?

What I failed to take into account in asking this stupid question was that Luke Andrew is in the job he’s in because he is a genius, and I’m in the state I’m in because I have spectacularly failed to understand the speed at which technology is moving. In my defence, it is very fast.

The first thing we talked about was something I had not even considered, but which immediately hit me as profoundly obvious and powerful. 

At this very moment. I’m actively working across three separate windows but my laptop screen has room only for one. When I switch windows, it’s not uncommon for me to get lost, get distracted, get sucked down an internet rabbit hole and eventually arrive back at my work disoriented, having lost focus.

So, when Andrew suggested increasing my screen real estate with the Dell 27 Inch Plus 4K USB-C Monitor, tripling my screen area, I could immediately see the benefits. Even better, the monitor plugs directly into the USB-C port on my laptop and also draws its power from my laptop, so it requires neither power nor HDMI cable – great news for my small and cluttered desk. Furthermore, its screen with low blue light and high refresh rate means less strain on my eyes. 

Next, he told me about the gains I could make with a new mouse. The Logitech MX Master 4 Wireless Mouse comes with super fast scrolling, both vertically and horizontally, which would dramatically increase the speed with which I can scroll through long, boring documents. Even more excitingly, it comes with the ability to trigger shortcuts for frequently used actions. In testing, Logitech found the feature could save up to 33% of a user’s time on certain tasks. If there’s one thing I love more than tech that promises to save time, it’s a study proving it.

Crucially for someone who uses a mouse as heavily as me, it’s ergonomic, designed to alleviate physical stress. It’s hard to overstate how important this is. At Noel Leeming, you can find multiple instantiations of ergonomic mouse. I urge you to take one of them up. When your arm courses with gratitude in the same way mine did when I first tried it, you can use that arm to write me a letter of gratitude.

As goes the mouse, so goes the keyboard. The ergonomic keyboard acknowledges what the traditional keyboard has steadfastly refused to: your arms do not emerge from the front of your chest. You will wonder why you and the rest of the world spent 40 years not knowing how simple the solution was.

Understandably, ergonomic hardware is Noel Leeming’s fastest growing category. What use is personal productivity and efficiency if your body stops working in the middle of your attempts to achieve it? It brings to mind the journalist’s oath: First do no harm to the parts of yourself responsible for touch typing.

Next, Andrew turned to the power of connections. A journalist’s career depends on connections. They are hard to make and harder to keep and I cannot afford to lose them mid-Zoom with famous people. The fear is real and so is the financial loss. If I miss the key quote, or lose the interview altogether, it’s not just the fee I miss out on, it’s my reputation: no one wants to hire a journalist who can’t keep a connection.

To avoid such catastrophes, I have, in the past, bought wi-fi extenders for my home but the experience has been average at best. Andrew tells me the solution is a mesh network. Where a wi-fi extender takes an already poor signal and extends it to another location and requires you to switch to another network, a mesh network creates one unified network, allowing you to roam throughout the house with seamless connectivity.

He says there is still a place for extenders: “But if you don't want to be cut off on that Zoom call, if you don't want to have your data drop or bandwidth drop off when all the kids are on streaming, this is going to give you your best user experience for both work and play.”

Finally, and crucially, he addressed the importance of image. As media, both mainstream and social, becomes increasingly video-based, a high quality camera is crucial. The Logitech MX Brio Ultra HD 4K Webcam delivers a far better image than almost any laptop camera, sorts the lighting automatically if you sit in the wrong place on a video call, and it sits on top of the laptop screen, meaning it delivers both better ergonomics and a better user experience. It also does that cool thing where it blurs out the background, which is great for me because my office is also my bedroom.

The call had been short but efficient – just the way I like it. I had begun it sceptical that I could squeeze any more productivity out of my workday and ended it having seen the light. I knew that light would look even brighter once I was viewing it through the Logitech MX Brio Ultra HD 4K Webcam, on the Dell 27 Inch Plus 4K USB-C Monitor. All the minutes I’d been losing to window-switching, dropped video calls, Wikipedia rabbit holes and impending carpal tunnel syndrome could now go back into work I can invoice. Most importantly, my three hungry children would continue to be fed – and for that they had an unassuming genius from Noel Leeming to thank.

This piece was made in partnership with Noel Leeming. Shop the tech to support your life here.