It seems like it was only yesterday that you were complaining about being bored – that quarantine was turning your brain into mush and that you were feeling like you forgot how to hold a pen. Well, now it’s time to get productive! To help you kick off the new academic year, I’ve assembled a list of the four best organisational tools you can use to get your life on the right track.
- Notion
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This all-in-one workspace undoubtedly played an indispensable role in improving my personal workflow during my first year of university. Not only does this product sync across all devices, but it’s highly customisable as well. The fact that you can choose to vary permission levels, allowing other people to access content exactly that way you want, was revolutionary to me. More importantly, its extensive library of templates allows for the most tech-illiterate individual to navigate the application easily. Personally, I’m a big fan of the ‘Course Schedule’ template because it provides a visually clean overview of my upcoming readings, assignments, and exams in one space.
- Owaves
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The beauty of Owaves lies in its ability to help you organise your day-to-day activities. As university students, we often forget to factor in meals, exercise, and sleep into our daily schedules. Thankfully, this app was designed to optimize your circadian rhythm: its 24-hour “sunrise clock” gives you a biological perspective of time, giving you an intuitive, visual representation of how you organise your day. Not only does this provide insight into how productive you are on a daily basis, but it also factors in the extent to which you’re taking care of your personal health and wellbeing. As a visual learner, seeing my day sectioned into different categories definitely helped me stay focused.
- Habitica
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Inspired by RPG video games, Habitica allows you to develop, track, and maintain good habits through your customised avatar. The logic is simple: when you complete your goals, your character earns points, and when you fail to follow through on those same tasks, your points get taken away. At university, I found it difficult to develop a good work ethic and maintain a degree of discipline with myself. However, the app’s video game-inspired design helped motivate me, ultimately making the process of cultivating new habits and performing chores light-hearted and fun.
- MealBoard
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From collecting recipes and planning meals, to tracking my pantry inventory, to creating grocery lists, MealBoard helped take care of all my food-related concerns. Its clean, uncluttered interface made it easy to save and find my favourite recipes alongside creating meal plans organized by day and meal type. Personally, the inbuilt ‘Recipe Prep’ notification function was particularly useful because it would remind me to complete tasks in advance (this meant that I would finally remember to defrost the chicken ahead of time).
These apps were a lifesaver for me in my first year. And with so many of us studying in different corners of the world, these apps can help you feel organised even if you’re not on campus. So, go ahead, check them out and watch your university life grow more productive by the second!