When I log on to my trading computer, it’s always with the objective to make money – either in my daily trading or in my businesses. If you are like me, you don’t want anything to get in the way of that objective.
Usually, it’s pretty cut and dry. I’ve been trading long enough to know what works. I have a mental preparation routine, a process to keep distractions to a minimum – no watching the news, the ringer switched to off on my cell phone, and my office door closed; these are all things I do to keep my path to making profits clear.
However, I always find that it’s the small things that can really halt progress. Especially when it comes to processes and tools on my computer. Really, I am on my computer for 8-10 hours of the day. Creating short cuts and customizing how my workflow functions on my computer is super important.
If you haven’t taken a few minutes to set up your menus and shortcuts on your computer, you should consider investing a small piece of your time in these features. It really does save time. Even if it removes a few minutes of repetitive tasks a day on your trading computer, it’s worth it.
I find that I use my Start Menu the most when accessing applications on my computer. There are lots of ways that you can customize this menu, and I want to share with you one change that really makes a difference to me.
The right panel of your Start Menu is the gateway to your control panel, documents, and other critical areas of your computer. By default, your computer wants you to open multiple windows to navigate to things like your sound settings, local drives, appearance settings, etc. You might not know that you can alter this to make submenus right inside of your Start Menu, instead of having a window open for any of these menu options that I mentioned.
Here is how to customize the right menu panel of your Start Menu:
Customize The Right Side Panel Of Your Start Menu In Windows 7
Here are the steps:
- Mouse down to the Start Menu.
- Right click on the Start Menu itself.
- A grey contextual menu appears. Click Properties.
- When the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties window appears, click on Customize – which is in the upper right corner.
- Left click on Customize.
- For each menu item that appears, you can decide whether it should be a link to the folder (i.e., should open a new window), or a menu of sub-options.
- Select the menu items from the list that you use most often, and choose either the folder or menu setting.
- Now click OK.
- Then click Apply and OK.
- Open the Start Menu once again to see that that changes have been applied to the right panel.
That’s it! You’ve customized your Start Menu panel with the items you utilize the most.
There are more trading computer tips like this in our buyers guide. Check out our “How To Buy a Trading Computer” e-book.
We hope today’s Quick Tip helped you. If you found this helpful, you’ll want to check out the other computer how-to’s I’ve created on this page. You can always call us if you have questions: 800-387-5250
