We’ve made the point here several times in the past that the “Helping Hand” (also called a “Third Hand”) is a crucial tool in doing successful electronics work. We recommend having at least two. On the wonderful, marvelous Instructables, a builder shows how easy it is to add your own ball-socketed, adjustable “fingers” to your Hand. The more fingers the merrier, we say.
In another Instructable, he shows a “why the hell didn’t *I* think of that?” way of tweaking the set-up of your Helping Hand unit to make it much more useful for small PCBs and other close-in work (hint: it involves ditching that magnifying “finger” that’s rarely used — at least my scratched up, crappy plastic one isn’t — I have an honest-to-goodness glass one on my second Hand).