Get fab hair fast and shorter errand runs

(Oprah.com) -- You're busy and everything you need to do, you need to do fast. Whether it's getting a quick shot of glamour, winning over a baby, or doing everything on your computer with ease, we've got ways to do it in double time. Here goes. Fasten your seat belts!

Fix your hair in three minutes

It's 5 p.m. at the office, you look as frazzled as you feel, and -- surprise! -- you (and your disheveled hair) are expected at a cocktail party starting in T minus 59 minutes.

Pull yourself together by working a silicone-based styling balm from the midsection to the ends of your hair, says Jimmy Paul, a New York City stylist. (We love Bumble and Bumble Defrizz, $22.) "It gets rid of any frizz and immediately adds shine and definition to your style," he says. (Fine-haired types, apply the balm only to your ends, since silicone tends to weigh hair down.)

Turn right, finish errands faster

Taking a left-hand turn on a busy two-way street can be a maddening time suck -- minutes tick by as you sit, idling, with your blinker on. UPS drivers avoid this by taking right turns whenever possible. The company has developed a software program that maps out delivery routes using a majority of right turns -- a move that last year helped save the company about three million gallons of fuel and shaved more than 28 million miles off their routes.

UPS employees now use this trick on their off-hours and swear that it can trim at least a minute from each errand -- and five errands an hour means five to 10 minutes' worth of saved time.

UPS spokesperson and confirmed right-turner Lynnette McIntire says she borrows yet another trick from the company's drivers, who are trained to put their key rings on their pinky finger when they exit the truck. "It saves me so much time," she says. "If you're carrying groceries, you don't have to dig in your purse for keys -- they're right there on your little finger."

Reduce your impact on the environment

The website Zero Footprint (www.zerofootprint.net) gives you easy ways to reduce your impact on the global environment. (Unplug your cell phone charger once the phone has been charged! Buy apples from Washington or New York, not Fiji!) You can compare your carbon footprint to others' (by city or country), and hook up with like-minded people in your area (if you want to carpool or sponsor a farmers' market).

So take the O challenge and reduce your footprint by 10 percent. If three million readers succeed, we'll accomplish the environmental equivalent of planting and caring for 91 million tree seedlings for 10 years, or removing 690,000 cars from the road, or reducing the emissions of Liechtenstein 13 times over.

Win over a baby

"Don't look at the child's face," says T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., author of "Touchpoints: Birth to Three" and clinical professor emeritus of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Babies are hypersensitive communicators, he says. At three days old, infants recognize their mother's voice, and at two weeks, they prefer their father's face to other men's.

Everyone else has their work cut out for them. "Look to the child's side or over his shoulder," says Brazelton. "This way he won't feel overwhelmed." Allow the child to set the pace. He'll signal when he's ready to make friends by trying to get your attention;an infant will attempt to match your gaze, a slightly older baby will coo, a toddler will reach out for you or make funny faces.

Build an instant home library

For book lovers who want a more comprehensive library, publishers are making the process simpler. Amazon.com sells "The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection," over 1,000 paperbacks dressed up in Penguin's recognizable black and orange bindings; it retails for just under $8,000 and weighs a mere 7,000 pounds.

Hardcover aficionados might prefer "The Everyman's 100," a set of the bestselling titles at everymanslibrary.com for $2,202.95; -- "The Histories" by Herodotus to "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. If you're more interested in modern masterpieces, Everyman's also offers the "Contemporary Classics," 20th-century works for $3,821.35. "It's a great sampling of writers as varied as Toni Morrison and Vladimir Nabokov," says Roz Parr, who helped assemble both collections. "They're beautiful editions with curved bindings and ribbon markers -- and surprisingly well priced given the production value."

We understand laying out thousands of dollars at once isn't always practical. Enter "Harvard Classics," also known as "The Legendary Five Foot Shelf of Knowledge." The titles -- "all the books needed for a real education" --- were selected by George W. Eliot, who was president of Harvard in 1910. Today, you can sign up at eastonbookspress.com to receive one leather-bound volume from his list each month ($64.70).

Organize e-mail in a snap

"Stop trying to create a folder for every topic in your life," says Gina Trapani, editor of the personal productivity blog Lifehacker (www.lifehacker.com). "It's hopeless, not to mention a total time, energy, and creativity drain." Instead drag your messages into her trusted trio of folders.

Archive: It's your e-mail reference library," says Trapani. It contains everything you might someday want or need. "You just don't need to separate old e-mails into different folders, because you can always search this dumping ground by sender, topic, or keyword."

Hold:This folder would be for everything that requires someone else's help. Trapani says, "Don't put stuff in your follow-up folder that you can't actually follow up on yet."

Follow-up:This would contain all the e-mails that you must respond to but require more than two minutes to do so. (For any e-mails that take less than that to answer, you should respond as you read them.)

Leverage what the Web has to offer

Build your own info-packed iGoogle home page with feeds from your favorite newspapers, blogs, and Web sites by going to www.google.com/ig and opening an account (gmail users can sign in with their e-mail address and password). A blue box will appear at the top, asking you to pick from popular sites (like weather.com, cnn.com, or BBC News) to get started; check the ones you'd like and hit Save. You can then arrange the feeds, which appear as boxes with linked text and pictures, by clicking and dragging them.

To find more feeds -- including videos from "The Daily Show," or a photo from dailypuppy.com -- click on Add Stuff in the top right-hand corner and begin your hunt. Once you've got all the news and eye candy you need, click on Back to Homepage in the top left.

Manage your healthcare

Self-diagnosers already turn to the web to find out what their symptoms might mean. Starting in 2008, Google plans to deliver more targeted health results by asking industry experts to flag reliable sources of medical information. In a presentation at the 2007 Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Marissa Mayer, the company's head of search announced that users will also be able to -- Eureka! -- find an actual doctor by searching on specialty, affiliation and location, and store their personal medical records.

The biggest breakthrough for the consumer could be having digital and portable health records, "maybe so portable you can carry it on a USB drive," said Mayer in her presentation. "You could travel around the globe and know that your records are a few keystrokes and password away."

Watch TV online, even if you have a Mac

"This is a common complaint that we and other networks hear," says a TNT spokesperson. "The easiest and quickest way to view these shows would be purchasing them through iTunes, AOL, or Amazon.com." For two other options, we went to Mark Frauenfelder, author of "Rule The Web: How To Do Anything And Everything On The Internet -- Better, Faster, Easier":

• Option 1 (free): Some Mac users have reported success in viewing TNT's Dramavision videos after installing Flip4Mac (www.flip4mac.com), a utility that allows Macs to play Windows videos.

• Option 2 ($100): All Intel-based Macs (those made in the last couple of years) will run the Windows operating system, which you can buy legally on eBay. That way, you can use your Mac to run any kind of Windows applications, including Windows online video players.

Keystrokes for faster computer work

Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that typing on a keyboard probably doesn't cause carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). Using a mouse for more than 20 hours each week is what puts you at a higher risk. To avoid a potentially painful situation, use keystroke combinations to perform actions you need to do a lot.

There are literally thousands of shortcuts. Check the menu when you're using a program like Microsoft Outlook or Adobe Photoshop, and you'll see them listed to the right of the actions they correspond to. To get started, master these basics.

Action: Cut or copy and paste

Mac: Apple + X, Apple + C, and Apple + V

PC: Ctrl + X, Ctrl + C, and Ctrl + V

Why they help: Almost everyone's first set of shortcuts eliminates two to four mouse clicks.

Action: Select All

Mac: Apple + A

PC: Ctrl + A

Why it helps: Before you cut, copy, or delete, you must select.

Action: Find and replace

Mac: Apple + F

PC: Ctrl + F

Why it helps: If you spell "recommend" with two "c's" in a document repeatedly, you only need to fix it once. You can also find text in a document or a web page without having to read.

Action: Toggle between applications

Mac: Apple + Tab

PC: Alt + Tab

Why it helps: Multi-tasking takes on a new meaning when it's only one click between tasks.

Action: Take a screenshot

Mac: Apple + Shift + 3

PC: Print screen then paste (Ctrl + V) into a document

Why it helps: Instant examples in your greeting cards and presentations!

Action: Move through fields on a website form

Any platform or browser: Tab/Shift + Tab

Why it helps: You can register for a website, apply for a job, and more without touching your mouse.

Action: Force quit

Mac: Apple + Alt + Escape

PC: Ctrl + Alt + Delete

Why it helps: A computer meltdown doesn't have to be a real-world time suck.

Change e-mail addresses; bring contacts with you

Taking time to retype your contacts into a new e-mail program's address book is tedious; it almost defeats the purpose of switching to an email provider that's simple and fast. Quinn McHenry, co-founder of Tech-Recipes.com has a solution. He says that moving your address book is easy as C. S. V. That's the type of file you need to follow his 8-step recipe for moving all of your contacts from Hotmail to Gmail -- it only took us 90 seconds!

1. While logged into hotmail, go to the toolbar and select contacts

2. From there, go to options in the upper-right corner and select xport contacts

3. When prompted to open or save the file, select save and place in the desired location. A .csv file, which contains your contact list, will now be on your computer.

4. Login to your gmail.com account.

5. Using the menu bar at left, click on the contacts link

6. On the upper right hand corner, select mport.

7. Click browse and find your .csv file. Open it and click on the import contacts button.

8. Wait for confirmation, close, done.

Starting from Yahoo!, AOL, or another e-mail provider? Get yourself to step 3 by searching your program's help center. Then, follow steps 4 through 8.

From "O, The Oprah Magazine," December 2007 E-mail to a friend

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