Have you ever had a ten-page report due at 8am sharp with no extensions and no excuses? Have you ever spent an entire night typing it all up? Have you ever hit ‘Save’ and had your computer freeze and when you reboot it, all your work is gone? I have, and when it happened I wanted to break my computer into pieces with something heavy. The amount of frustration that goes through a human body usually explains acts like this one where a man in the office smashes his PC with a keyboard and then gives it a finishing kick once it hits the floor. It’s a natural reaction to be mad when something doesn’t go your way. Any average person’s patience has its limits when a computer freezes, crashes, or simply does not do what you want it to do.

Unfortunately, once it happens there’s not much you can do. What you want to do is prevent it from happening in the first place. My main advice is to always save your work. One professor in college advised me to save my work every couple of sentences or every 10 minutes. I decided to his advice and have worked it into my routine to save everything in steps. It doesn’t take long to hit the little ‘Save’ button on the top, but it does take a long time to retype that ten-page report that was due at 8am. It’s just worth it. Period.

It’s also a good idea to keep your PC well maintained, clean inside and out, and that all of your important data is backed up. Nowadays, a lot of businesses back up their daily work on tapes stored in remote locations. That way, no excuses can be made. Your PC is a combined piece of hardware and software that can be damaged or corrupted at any second. Getting mad at it and hitting it won’t really solve anything. So again, save your work, maintain your PC, and smile. Getting frustrated only hurts yourself and your wallet.