College is probably the most hectic period of time in the life of any person. You suddenly realize that in order to succeed you have to put in a much greater effort than you did in school, you encounter scores of unfamiliar challenges, you have to deal with them in a completely new environment, all the time trying to balance out your studies, extracurricular activities, part-time jobs, and personal life. Everything and everyone around you is after your time and attention, and rationing them to deal with everything may seem like an impossible task. Fortunately, we live in the age when it is possible to say, “There is an app for it” about almost anything – time management included.
myHomework Student Planner
The word “homework” here is used in its broadest sense, including all the assignments, tests, exams, labs, projects and other types of work you have to do, so it is equally suitable for all students, ranging from middle school all the way to university. The main feature of myHomework is a calendar where you can keep track of all your time-sensitive commitments. You will receive reminders when they are close to being due, and you can see them all in one place – this way, you will never be surprised by an assignment you’ve forgotten about. You can also look ahead for the situations in which you have multiple assignments to submit close together so that you can spread them out and deal with them at your leisure.
SimpleMind
Mind mapping is widely believed to be one of the most effective and productive ways of organizing your thoughts and jump-starting your creativity. SimpleMind is a simple yet powerful multiplatform app that can be synchronized with Google Drive and Dropbox so that you always have your mind maps along and can share them with others. Thus, the next time there is a need to find for you advanced service that will help you with your homework, you will be able to put all the information about different agencies along with their pros and cons in one place where you can easily compare them.
Pomodairo
The Pomodoro technique is popular time management and productivity method that many students find especially useful when dealing with writing assignments. It helps them concentrate on the current task, eliminate distractions, and always work at the top level of productivity. However, in its pure form, this method is a little bit too low-tech and inconvenient. Pomodairo is a simple yet efficient app that takes boring and mechanical procedures out of the way, allowing you to concentrate on the core of what the Pomodoro technique has to offer. In addition to offering a timer, it keeps track of pomodoros (25-minute segments of time at the basis of the method), interruptions, tasks and a number of other things.
Freedom
Time management isn’t just about planning and doing things ahead of time without a hurry. Preventing yourself from wasting time is just as if not more important – no amount of planning will help if you don’t follow the plans you’ve prepared and spend an inordinate amount of time on Facebook and Twitter. Freedom is an app that helps you when mere willpower is not enough. With its help, you can block you out of apps, websites, games, social media, and other distractions that eat up your productive time. You can designate a time when you only want to work, and the app will prevent you from getting sidetracked, giving you the freedom to do what you really want to do.
Remember the Milk
Some students constantly feel overwhelmed by dozens upon dozens of small and large tasks but just can’t get the hang of traditional to-do lists. They keep on losing them and leaving them at home and taking them out to write down, yet another new task is often too much of a hassle. If you belong to this category of people, you should try out Remember the Milk – a to-do list app that is always with you. You can use it on your smartphone and a variety of other devices, and the information between them is synchronized in real time, which means that wherever you go, whatever you do and whatever device you are currently using, any changes you make to your lists are going to be immediately synchronized across all your workstations. Remember the Milk is an excellent example of a to-list devoid of all the hassle – a to-do list, even the most disorganized and absent-minded person on Earth can successfully use.
A student’s life is a constant race against time – you always have more tasks and activities to do than is possible to complete in the allotted time. If an app can give you a head start, you should start using it, and do it as soon as possible.