Did you cringe at the last power bill you received? Oh we know exactly how you feel. We should update the old saying – there’s 3 things that are certain. Death, Taxes and Increasing energy prices. But at the same time, these are things we can do very little or nothing about. So… what is a smart entrepreneur to do?

Manage it. For many of us solo entrepreneurs our gadgets are like a lifeline to our business. Chief gadget is the phone. Boy are those smartphones handy. I really do love mine but with each new phone, I also notice how much more power hungry they are. Little wonder, they are like tiny computers. While many of the features that come with the phone is nice, there are things you can turn off or limit so your battery lasts longer.

On my phone, I have the automatic syncing to Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Weather etc all turned off. Instead, I will sync manually when I need up to date information. There’s also a very good side effect doing this. You’re not as distracted. You don’t need a gazillion texts and notifications popping up when you need to focus on work. Doing just this one thing dramatically extended the battery life between charges.

Turn down the brightness of the screen. Although screens have some a long way, they still suck up a major portion of energy be it on your phone, laptop or desktop. On the desktop and laptop it is perhaps a little easier to control because you’re not moving as often. Once you set it at a comfortable and yet low enough brightness, you’re good to go. But on a phone… I keep mine to the minimum since I’m home or indoors a lot. But there are times it really sucks when I’m outside in the bright sunlight and have to struggle blindly to get the brightness up. The phone does have an automatic setting which is still not dim enough for indoors in my opinion. Still working on the perfect balance on this. However, keeping it low works for me.

Turn them OFF. What a concept huh. And I don’t just mean the phone at night, but things like your monitor, computer, speakers, fax machine, printers, CD and DVD drives. But sometimes turning things off doesn’t mean they really are off. So many things we own now have ‘standby’ modes. Not good enough, they still suck energy. Invest in a power strip that has a switch on it and flip that switch at night. I’m always amazed at how quiet it is after I power down for the night… at time, the stillness kinda makes me want to get back to work!

I know I’ve gushed a lot about the Livescribe pen and yes, even though it is an electronic gadget that uses power vs a regular pen that needs no power, I wonder sometimes, how much energy I would save if I powered everything down for one or two hours and work off the grid. I don’t have to use the Livescribe but using it does make getting back on the grid easier. Hmm… something to experiment with.

What do you think?