Best productivity apps/sites for the student and/or professional

This list is designed to optimize tasks that you already have to do - not to add extra steps to your day, so don't be intimidated!

1. BedTime on iPhone

Sleep is the easiest way to maintain the optimal version of your health. As a student or professional, it is absolutely imperative to your performance, and, honestly, general joy towards life. Long-term effects of sleep deprivation are horrifying, and there is lots of research to support the following. Lack of sleep has been connected to short-term and long-term memory issues time and time again, which makes you less efficient in your work and studies. It also has both short-term and long-term effects on your concentration, focus, and problem-solving skills and creativity. Sleep deprivation can affect your mood, and has been consistently linked to greater levels of anxiety and depression over time. Sleep deprivation has also been linked to high blood pressure, risk of heart disease, diabetes, and weakened immunity. Is it fair that you've worked so hard, and, in a cruel twist of irony, lost sleep because you've been working so hard, but you're not able to get what you want because of the negative effects of sleep deprivation piling up over time?

I promise you, holding yourself accountable in a quantifiable form that you can visualize and track is the most effective way to get enough sleep. BedTime on iPhone allows you to pick a bed time and wake time based on the amount of hours of sleep you want to get and you can modify it very easily day to day by just shifting the wheel. Here's what I mean:

See how easy that was! Over time, you can track your weekly and monthly sleep averages. I know the thought of that is daunting - you probably know you don't get enough sleep, and having to see that may be as scary as opening your bank account after a bad few purchases. But wouldn't you continue to spend your money frivolously if you didn't keep track of your expenditures? Also, don't be deterred by using BedTime because you think it requires extra time - it takes no more time than setting a quick alarm, which is something you do anyway! If you have an iPhone, Bedtime is already on your phone - no download required. An Android alternatives is Sleep as Android.

2. Anki

A snippet of my Anki deck 

My whole life I've encountered students who study by reading over their notes, and my heart drops a little bit at the thought, because you can be doing so much more with that time.  There is a huge difference in output achieved by passive learning vs. active learning - this is an unchangeable fact. Reading over your notes is a very passive method of studying conceptual courses. You can still get a good mark by doing so... but it'll take much more time. Actually testing yourself qualifies as active learning and will yield far better results in much less time. Anki is your best friend when it comes to learning quicker, especially for conceptual courses, and most especially for memorization-based courses (so basically all courses except for maths and physics). Anki lets you create flash cards quickly. You create the question side and the answer side. Creating the flash cards in the first place is a great way of taking notes and learning while you're doing so. Please, do this instead of re-writing the notes your professor wrote out. That is such a waste of time because you're not having to re-write the knowledge in your own words. Writing the knowledge in a different format and in your own words by transferring them to Anki flashcards requires you to use your brain to manipulate the information, which helps exponentially in retaining the info long term. There's also the added benefit of being able to test yourself with the flashcards, which simulates a test environment - also proven to improve your test scores over time.

Anki offers lots of other features - check them out here! You can sync your card decks on Anki across your devices and test yourself using your flashcards anywhere - while you're commuting to school or waiting in line for your coffee. Anki made learning very difficult courses, such as intense anatomy and physiology courses, much more pleasant and fun for me. Anki allows you to set time intervals to review your cards so that you can effectively practice spaced memory retention - essential in retaining the info long term.

Editing interface

Example of a "question side"

Example of an "answer side"

You don't have to be a student to use Anki. You may be a teacher trying to learn their own coursework better. You may be someone trying to learn a new language. You can use Anki for your religious studies. You can use Anki to remember important concepts from your job.

3. Artificial light reducing apps

Let's continue the theme of getting better sleep that we started in #1! There's been much recent research to conclude that different colours of light affect our ability to sleep. Green light, and especially blue light, should be blocked before sleep to maximize melatonin production so that you can fall asleep faster. Now how do you do that? Your computer and phone screens are the two biggest sources of artificial blue and green light and you probably look at both before going to bed! How is it possible to filter out the blue and green? Well, you can use artificial light reducing apps. Trust me, if you have trouble falling asleep, use these and you may just notice the biggest difference. There are many out there - please leave your favourites in the comments! The ones that I've used are the following: f.lux for my computer, and Night Shift for iPhone (already on your phone - just go to Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Night Shift). A very acclaimed Android alternative is the Twilight app on Google Play.  Try this trick: use a light filtering feature on all your electronic devices before bed. You can preset them to change the lights at a certain time, or manually set the lights to dim whenever you want. This is a great long-term life hack - you'll be doing yourself a favour by getting on this as soon as you can. Even if this helps you get 40 more minutes of sleep every night, that really accumulates over time. Say you got an average of 6 hours of sleep every day for a week. That's 42 hours of sleep in total. If you got 6 hours and 40 minutes of sleep every night for a week, you would have a total of nearly 47 hours - much closer to the recommended amount.

Night shift on my iPhone

4. Discount add-ons/extensions

If you have not been using Honey, seriously, get on it. The add-on automatically finds coupon codes for you as you're about to check out on any site, and can help you save a lot of money over time.

If you're a student, don't sleep on the discount apps! Seriously - you'd be surprised at how many discounts and promotional offers are available to you. You'll never get this chance again in your life! Check out websites that find these discounts for you, such as UNiDAYS, or Student Beans.

5. Scannable

This app is pure magic. Check out this 3 minute video to see how useful it is. It has many features, but basically, it converts photos into pdfs that you can save, share, and print. If you don't want your doc to be saved as a pdf, you can change that in your settings. Very useful in business practices. You can take a photo of a piece of paper or a business card that's lying on your desk, and Scannable automatically turns it into a scannable pdf in real time - an electronic copy, in a matter of seconds! Currently, Scannable is only available for iPhone. An Android alternative is the built-in scanner for Android, but unfortunately, it does not have as many features.

6. Goodnotes

This is the best app for note-taking - I can't recommend it enough. There's a plethora of YouTube videos that go over its features in detail, so check those out - I'm offering a very brief summary here. Basically, it's a note-taking app that allows lots of editing options. I also use it for my electronic drawings - very useful for those into doodling and art!

Many options available for notebook and paper design - you can even select accounting paper, guitar scores, or music paper to be your sheets!

Lots of editing options available - laser tool (to point at something), my favourite, the lasso tool (copy, paste, & much more), shapes tool (recognizes when you're trying to draw a shape and perfects it for you, so you can draw an ugly and it turns into a straight line automatically, or you can circle something and the tool will perfect the circle for you), many options for line thickness and colour... + much more!

Here's how I organize my school notes:

My home page contains folders for all of my courses. Each course gets its own folder.

Here's an example of the inside of a specific course's folder: 

Each course's folder contains separate folders for each week of school. For example, the "Week 11" folder of this course contains all the notes, labs, and assignments of that week. 

Very useful for all my artistic needs due to its many drawing options!

Unfortunately, Goodnotes is currently only available for iOS and Mac. It is a one-time purchase of $10.99, and totally, totally worth it.

There you go - 6 apps/sites/add-ons that are total life-hacks. Do you have any recommendations for us? Please leave them in the comments below!


Sincerely,

Annesa