5 back-to-school productivity tools

It’s that time of the year again: Back-to-school. Like life, school is bittersweet; but you can (almost) always make it less bitter. Here’s a list of 5 back-to-school productivity tools with app suggestions that will hopefully help you manage your day better, enjoy making presentations a little bit more and generally help make this year more efficient and joyous. 

   

Here goes:

1. A to-do list. Those can go beyond your studious to-dos. I tend to keep a list of movies I’d like to see, and shopping lists including items to consider in sales. That way I don’t fret over forgetting the little mental memos. My current favorite is trello. It’s perfect if your list items have sub-lists and you’d like a progress bar to track them all. It also supports images, color coding, search and some unusual perks such as stickers and their ‘Card Aging’ feature which helps you visually notice inactive tasks. Wunderlist and Google keep are other wonderful options. Wunderlist offers reminders, sub-tasks, file attachments, search and above all, an elegantly intuitive interface. Google keep has a beautifully simple sticky-note design, check-lists, reminders, image support and - unsurprisingly - a really good search. All those mentioned list web apps also offer mobile apps.


2. A time tracker. In his 2007 talk, late Randy Pausch talked about the value of time journals mentioning: “Time is the commodity, you better find out where your time is going”. He also wished there’d be automated time journals in the future. Today, we’re fortunate enough to have a selection, including RescueTime which offers a wealth of visual data on how your time’s spent, and emails you regular time-reports (including subtle reprimands on how much time you spend distracted!). 


3.  A timer/stopwatch/alarm suite. If you feel an automated time tracker’s too invasive for your privacy, you can always opt for a simple stopwatch timer which on its own is very insightful.  You could start a stopwatch upon launching your browser, and another upon working which you can pause for breaks, etc. You can start as many stopwatches as you wish using this Chrome stopwatch add-on. The developer (Brillout) also developed the best timer I’ve seen thus far where you could set up a stopwatch (one per open tab), an alarm or a timer – very handy when timing yourself for your next break! This timer also helps you customize the background and alarm video, so you can totally have a beach wave sound swishing you into realization that you should be done with that assignment. 


4. A social barometer. It’s easy to fall off the social wagon in times of academic peril. It’s hence a good idea to set reminders for yourself to contact friends and family. Remember that contact could be as little as a text message. The app tinyblue (a recent discovery from lifehacker) helps you stay in touch by reminding you upon reaching the (customized) limit of not contacting a friend/relative. You could also use this app to sneak in other goals if you want, for instance set up the email reminder to notify you if a week has passed and you haven’t worked out.


5. A good presentation app. Most classes tend to follow the rule if project, then presentation. If you dread them, remember that presentations are an excellent way to showcase your style. Keep in mind that minimal text and good visuals go a long way. To easily design such impressionable presentations, check out Prezi (they offer a free plan for students) and Canva, both of which offer scores of inspiring examples and templates to help get you started. Prezi offers features including pleasantly animated slide transitions as well as ability to add videos and audio; very handy when exhibiting a demo as part of your demonstration. Canva helps you make presentations (among many other things such as flyers and business cards) that albeit being static - images and pdfs - glow with beautiful graphics and text holders that you can access from their rich library, plenty of which are free.  Both tools, as well as Google slides, help you collaborate with colleagues in presentation preparation. 

What do you think, which tool do you find most useful during school days (or just for productivity in general)? Any key ones I’ve missed? Feel free to comment below your thoughts.

Hope this was fruitful. If so, feel free to share!

Till the next post;

Noha Kareem