A Cardboard Box is All You Need to Comfortably Work Outside on Your Laptop

With more and more people working remotely for the foreseeable future, enjoying some fresh air and taking your conference calls outside certainly feels like a tempting option to help combat quarantine-induced boredom. But when you’re catching some rays, your laptop might run the risk of overheating — as well as probably being downright impossible to see even with the screen brightness turned all the way up, thanks to the sun’s strong glare.

One LinkedIn user found the easiest hack to protect your laptop and reduce screen glare from the sun. Tom Wood shared his genius “invention,” showing a photo of his laptop nestled inside a cardboard box tipped over sideways, with the cutout handles serving as a perfect source of ventilation to maintain your devices’ optimal temps. Wood called his hack the “latest in work from home technology,” sharing that it’s ideal for “when you are working from home and want to enjoy the sunshine, yet can’t see your laptop screen because of the sun!”

His post quickly racked up thousands of likes and comments, with plenty of people wondering why they hadn’t thought of doing the same. When a follower asked, “How long did it take for your laptop to overheat and shut itself down?” Wood replied by joking, “It’s in a cardboard box…not an oven,” noting that he placed the box in the shade to further prevent overheating.

Naturally, Wood’s trick made its way to Twitter, with many fellow remote workers trying it out for themselves to soak up a little summer sun while keeping their computers from frying.

It certainly seems like there are few better ways to get used to this “new normal” of working from home than this — all you need are some snacks, your favorite shades, and plenty of sunscreen, and you’re good to go.