I’m in a relationship with my laptop, and I must confess…it’s getting pretty serious. We spend hours together each day and there are days where don’t separate at all. One time, its spacebar even popped off when things got a little intense – but I’ll spare you the details.
All joking aside, we all spend a lot of time on our laptops as college students. Writing papers, doing research, watching the obligatory Netflix shows, etc. With that, there are apps that can help us through this beautiful yet stressful time in our life – why not make it a bit easier?
SelfControl
If you’re like me, your subconscious just automatically clicks on the Twitter bookmark. Or the Pinterest bookmark. Or even Facebook, depending on the level of boredom. This app has made me 10,000x more productive, whether it be in high or low stress situations. It doesn’t allow you to go on any website you put on the blacklist for the amount of time you set it for. Even if you delete the app, it still won’t let you go on those sites until the timer stops (I learned that one from experience).
Pomodoro Productivity App
There are various versions of this app, but all hold the basic idea of 25 minutes of working then a 5 minute break. It keeps track of all your time, and will tell you when to work and when to take a break. The 25/5 idea is based off of multiple psychological studies that support the efficiency of this method – citing the overall decreasing attention span within the human mind.
LastPass – Chrome Extension
I think I would die if I didn’t have this app. You think I’m exaggerating, but there’s no way I could survive without it. It’s honestly just an app that stores all your passwords and will generate safer passwords for you, and you’ll never have to type in another login again. You can even enable the auto-login feature so you don’t have to click anything – which, for a lazy/busy college student like myself, is a blessing.
Cite This For Me – Chrome Extension
Honestly, I cannot tell you how much I love this extension- truly. It’s amazing. Research papers can be absolutely awful in general, but I think the worst part of it all is putting together a formatted works cited page. However, this Chrome extension will make the citation for you with just one click of a button, and they even offer multiple types of citations (Chicago, MLA, etc.). It’s a godsend, it really is – it saved my sanity more than a few times.
AdBlock – Chrome Extension
This app is pretty much just a way to avoid all those pesky ads that pop up when you’re doing research. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but I highly recommend the extension.
OneTab – Chrome Extension
Speaking of research papers, we’ve all experienced the multiple-tab phenomena. The window that has 30+ tabs open and it takes you forever to find the one you’re looking for, or even just makes other tasks harder because of all the tabs. Well, this extension stores all those tabs in one place, making it neat and easily accessible.
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LINKS:
Self Control: https://selfcontrolapp.com/
Pomodoro Technique: https://tomato-timer.com/
LastPass: https://www.lastpass.com/
Cite this for me: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cite-this-for-me-web-cite/nnnmhgkokpalnmbeighfomegjfkklkle?hl=en
AdBlock: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom?hl=en
OneTab: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall?hl=en