7 Magical Apps That Will Boost Your Studying & Productivity.
Note-taking, time-management, productivity, learning, and memorizing
Our phones are double-edged swords depending on how we use them. On one hand, they can be incredibly destructive and distracting, but on the other hand, they can be one of the most useful tools for productivity and studying.
Being a student in 21 century is such an advantage to have because today's technology and clever apps are designed in a way that makes our academic life much easier and more sufficient.
In this article, I am going to share with you some of the most powerful apps and platforms that will level up your studying and enhance your productivity, convenience, and overall your academic success.
Notion
Notion is basically an all-in-one workspace that allows you to take notes, manage projects, set goals and plans, create calendars, manage to-do lists, write your daily journals, and so much more. Notion is a workspace that will not just organize your work and your studying, but literally everything in your life. Notion is famous for its versatility as it provides hundreds of features and options to make it easy for you to customize your Notion the way to want.
On top of that, the app is completely free of charge for however long you want for whatever you want. You can use Notion as a website on your computer or as an app on your smartphone devices. The cool thing is that you can sync your notes across all your devices, meaning that everything you type in your phone will be automatically synced across all of your devices.
As a new user, you might experience Notion as a bit complicated tool to be creating templates with all of the features and tools that are available in Notion. However, you can choose hundreds of free templates that suit you. To get to know how to use notion in a creative and effortless way, I encourage you to watch some free tutories on Youtube or on any other platform about how to master Notion.
🤷♂️Why notion❓
Notion is basically working as my second brain where I don’t stress myself keeping a lot of information in my mind when I have this revolutionary app that organizes everything for me till it’s time for all the data, information, or notes to be used.
I do pretty much everything in Notion from taking notes, organizing and tackling my projects, scheduleling my exams, tracking my goals and my habits, creating to-do lists, saving important data or personal information, writing my daily journal and so much more. Therefore, If I was chosen what is the one and only app that I would install on my computer, without a second thought it would be Notion.
Anki & Quizlet
Anki and Quizlet are flash-card apps that help you memorize things more efficiently and remember things easier. You start by creating your own study sets with terms, definitions, and examples and these apps will help you practice these terms and definitions or whatever you are learning
Anki and Quizlet are really good and they are quite similar, but Anik, in my opinion, is slightly better for being able to input stuff quickly using type short-cuts, plus it helps you apply the spaced repetition technique as Anki’s spaced repetition algorithm takes into account how difficult you find something and then lets you advance from there.
YouTube
We all know that Youtube is a really famous app with great entertainment, but Youtube is such a learning platform where you get to learn anything you want completely for free because it's accessible to worldwide audiences and hosts a diverse collection of learning videos.
Studies show that eLearning videos can be an extremely effective learning method because they bring a dynamic aspect to your eLearning classes, improve information sharing, clarify complicated processes, and aid in the explanation of challenging topics.
YouTube will assist you in your studies, if and only if you are fully focused on what you intend to accomplish. All other types of videos may distract you, but it is up to you to decide whether or not you want to study.
Podcast apps (Goole podcast & Spotify)
Listening to podcasts is such a great way of learning. Podcast audio content gives you the ability to dive into topics without having to set aside time to read or watch a video. Podcasts also offer articles in smaller bite-sized chunks perfect for daily commutes or busy routines.
Podcasts are a great way to teach new content, something suited for passive learning. Students can listen on their own, freeing up valuable classroom time for more active learning. Going through questions, participating in group discussions, and making things with others can all be part of this
What app to use❓
I personally prefer using Google podcast as my default podcast player because it is specialized just with podcasts, but on the other hand, apps like Spotify might be a distracting source as it is not just a podcast app.
Kindle App
When it comes to reading digital books, I prefer to reading my books on Kindel for one major reason. The reason is that when I am reading on Kindle I have the option to highlight anything across and of my devices.
As students, we read many books, browse many articles, listen to several podcasts. Sometimes, when we are consuming contests we find highlights or interesting bits that resonate with us or insights that we would want to capture for later but that was somehow not possible till I came across apps and platforms that work together seamlessly to form a logging framework to keep all of these highlights and insights into just one place. The app is the next app which is called Readwise.
Readwise
Readwise is basically a highlight manager for the knowledge that you intake from various sources. It is the integration layer for the whole system because it brings together all of the highlights that you’ve created from your consumption apps like Kindel and Instapaper.
All of the books that I read on kindel with all of the highlights that I made all come into one place. My Readwise is also automatically connecting to Instapaper, though which I am able to highlighter anything from the articles that I read and put them all in one place.
Additionally, Readwise has a game-changing feature which is that Readwise can automatically export all of its highlights to my second brain, Notion, so all the books, articles, tweets, links that I have highlighted in Kindle, Instapaper, or any other apps connected to Readwise will automatically be imported into my Notion page so that by the click of a button I can have access to all of my highlights and insights.
Focus To-DO
Focus to-do is a basic and simple app and all it does is just one job, but this app does the job really well. Focus To-Do is an app that organizes your studying sessions based on the Pomodoro Technique, which is one of the most powerful short-term productivity techniques as it externalizes the self-discipline that you need to keep working, but it also re-frames your task from output-based to input-based. Focus To-Do forces you to study when you set a timer it locks your phone so you’re not tempted to get distracted while your studying sessions.
My picks of the week 🙌
🎧Podcast: 6 Ways to Stop listening to People’s Opinions & Take Control of Your Life by Jay Shetty.
📺Videos: Study less study smart - by Marty Lobdell
📚Book: The Magic of Thinking Big by David J Schwartz.
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🕊️Twitter: Mohamed Elsayed
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