We tend to turn our phones off when it’s time to get down to work, but there are lots of apps out there that can help with your revision timetable, organise your tasks, or even keep you motivated – you just need the right one for you.
To keep on top of important tasks, countless people rely on to-do apps every day.
There are lots of variations out there like Wunderlist and GTasks, but Todoist is my favourite. I always try out different productivity apps, but I consistently go back to Todoist because of the simplistic, yet powerful design.
With Todoist, I can quickly add tasks, collaborate with others and keep track of projects across all of my devices. It may be free, but you can only get access to some essential features like task reminders if you’re willing to pay £21.99 a year.
Whilst trying out the various to-do apps that are available, I stumbled across Habitica. Just like other to-do apps, Habitica lets you organise daily tasks, but that’s where the similarities end. The developers describe it as “a video game to help you improve real life habits.”
Habitica replaces traditional in-game quests with real-life tasks, and motivates you to keep working and build productive habits with in-game rewards or punishments. For every completed task, you earn coins, but every task that you don’t complete will result in damage to your character. Habitica may be fun, but it lacks some of the essential features like project organisation that other to-do apps have.
Task management isn’t the only thing that your phone can help you with, it can also motivate you to concentrate on the task at hand. There are lots of methods to keep you concentrating, but the Pomodoro method is one of the more popular ones.
It’s pretty simple, you work for 25 minutes then take a 5-minute break – once you have completed 100 minutes of work you get a 20-minute break. It may not be for everyone, but there are many Pomodoro apps out there. Personally, I think that Pomodoro Timer is the best for iOS and ClearFocus is the best for Android.
Going into the final months of university, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and struggle to manage you time. But, with the amount of help out there, it doesn’t have to be that difficult.
If there’s one piece of advice I could give to help you, though, it would be to resist the urge to click on that addictive Facebook icon, and you really will see the difference.