Pomodoro

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Pomodoro is a time management technique designed to minimise anxiety and maximise your efficiency. 

Basically it involves 25 minutes working sessions, followed by a 3 to 5 minutes break. After each 4 Pomodoro sessions, take a longer break of about 15 to 30 minutes. This has been scientifically proven to boost work morale/efficiency as it helps to prevent you from getting burnt out on your work and becoming distracted.

It’s a great technique and in a way it rewards you for working, you know that once you’ve done 25 minutes of work you can have a 5 minute break to play on your phone or whatever you want to do. Then once you’ve done a couple of sessions you can have a longer break.

It all started from a Tomato shaped kitchen timer that the creator used when he was in University. There are a few different websites or apps you can use for the Pomodoro Technique, or even a kitchen timer if you have one. Just start by searching ‘pomodoro’ on your device app store.

Wakelet

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Save, organise and share content across the web with Wakelet.

This is a great tool that allows you to pool all of you research in to one location, called a Wake. You can save webpages, images, videos, tweets, articles, blog posts and more just by pasting the link in to Wakelet or by installing it’s browser extension and just clicking two buttons. Then you can share your wake with anyone in the world, or keep it private to you.

Take a look at some examples of Wakes below, these show you different formatting options and custom layouts.

How to train for a marathon

In the eyes of a pilot

Learn coding online

Discover London in a day

Egenda

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Egenda is a homework tracker app to help you keep on top of all your assignments.


Egenda is a simple to use app, all it takes is 3 steps; Create your classes, add some assignments, hammer your homework.

All you need to do once set up is to add your homework assignment in as soon as the teacher sets it, you’ve then got a one stop location to remind yourself of what’s due soon and what you can leave for later. You can also view homework by just the class.

Simple, Fast, Homework Manager
View all your due homework

View details about your Homework
View the homework of a class

Any.Do

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Any.Do is an award-winning app used by millions of people to stay organized and get more done.


Any.do helps you organize your life by creating a to do list then setting reminders to keep you on track, you can also use this same system for lists such as shopping lists. It’s free!

The beauty of Any.do is that it can be used on a huge range of devices including your Apple Watch or Amazon Alexa devices, it also integrates with Siri for Apple users too. Plus for Android users, it works on any Wear OS smartwatch and support for Google Home devices is currently being worked on.

Android
iOS
Windows
Mac
Web
Alexa
Chrome
Smartwatch

Hold

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Hold believes in working hard for something should be an awesome experience. The app rewards you when you’re focused and not using your phone.


When you want to focus on something, whether it’s work, exercise, relaxing or even just watching TV, open Hold and press Start.

You can join a leaderboard of your friends and even against other college students.

For each 20 minute period you have the app open and are not using your phone, you get 10 points. Offers and rewards change weekly but when I was writing this article you could get a mens razor for 150 points, a free popcorn at Vue cinemas for 100 points or 50% off a magazine subscription.

Class Timetable

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Use Class Timetable to manage your schedule and organize your tasks. Get notifications for upcoming lessons and tasks you need to complete.


Notion

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Notion is like a one stop app for college life. It allows you to take and share notes, create an agenda, build a reading list, a to-do list and more. Plus, it’s free when you sign up with your college email address.


Notion for students is a free tool that lets you write, plan, collaborate and get organized in the one app. It’s designed to boost your personal productivity by reducing the amount of different apps you need to use for your work. Even if you still need to use Google Docs for college work for example, you can embed the Doc straight in to Notion to get as close to the one app lifestyle as possible.

Don’t just take my word for it, Ali Abdaal a Cambridge University medicine graduate and now junior doctor has made a useful review video that takes you through all the features of Notion as well as a few tips and tricks to get the most out of it.

They also host a series of talks with pioneers of the computer world, including one of the original members of the Apple Macintosh development team and the man who coined the term Hypertext which is the base of the hyperlinks we use today. Watch their Tools & Craft sessions.

Todoist

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Todoist is a to-do list that allows you to collaborate with a team no matter how big or small. Or just keep track of your own jobs.


Read more

StudyBlue

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StudyBlue is the largest crowdsourced study library with over 400 million flashcards and study guides.


Flashcards are simple, mastering how to use them though is something else.

IFTTT / If This Then That

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If This Then That is unique app that allows you to link your apps and devices in new ways. For example, you can get it to automatically log all phone calls to a Google Sheet or upload any photo you put on Instagram as a native photo on Twitter.


IFTTT calls the tasks ‘recipes’, as in you put a load of different bits in to get a final outcome.

Examples of what you can do with IFTTT:

  • Get a daily text with the weather report for the day
  • Automatically log time and telephone number to Google Sheets each time you get a phone call
  • Set your phone to silent when you get to work or college
  • Upload all screenshots you take on your phone straight to Google Drive

Personally, i have a habit of putting my phone down at home in odd places then not being able to find it, or because it’s a sturdy Android device I throw it somewhere and have no idea where it’s landed. I have a recipe set up so when I ask my Google Home device ‘Where’s my phone?’, IFTTT will turn my phone on to the maximum volume and sends a call through so I can find it easily.

There are so many different possibilities with this, have a look at the video below for just 10 of them.