When at university there are so many distractions and staying productive can be tricky. These are a couple of tools that I have found helpful and I hope they can help you too.

1. Goggle Drive

This one is obvious and it defiantly isn’t a secret, but it is proven to be so useful. At uni you’ll inevitably have to do a group project or presentation and trying to put together a slide deck or document when not everyone is present. With Goggle Drive, you can set up a folder and add as many files as you want to it and share the link with all members of your team. You drag and drop pretty much any file you want so everyone can see it or you can create a Google Doc where any member of your team can add or edit information.

2. Trello

This is less known tool but is still very useful. It can be used for many things, but I mainly use it as an ongoing To Do list. So, you can make lists and then add cards which for me are usually the jobs I have to do. Each card can be expanded, and you can add a description or comments. Each card can be easily moved to different lists. Similar to Goggle drive, the Trello boards can be shared which can make project management a lot easier. Trello can be downloaded as an app on your phone or tablet and on to your computer. If you don’t want to download it, you can also just access it online at https://trello.com.

3. Flora/Forest

Flora (iPhone) or Forest (Android) is an app that keeps you off your phone or tablet when you’re trying to work. The aim of the game is to grow as many flowers or trees as you can. You can grow flowers by planting seeds and depending on how long you want to focus for, they will take that long to fully grow. However, if you do get distracted and go on your phone, the app will send you a warning notification that your tree is about to die and if you continue you then kill you tree. At the end of a study session you can see you garden with all the plants that’s you’ve grown. You can also ‘travel’ round the world growing new trees to make your garden as exotic as you can.

4. OneNote

This is another tool which most people may know about or they do but they’d chose Word over OneNote. I was one of those people but recently I’ve found OneNote so much more convenient. On OneNote you can have different books for different subjects maybe or a semester. Within each book you can add many different sections and then within the sections you can add pages, were you can type your notes. So, for me I have a book called Second Semester and then in the book each of my sections are the units I’m taking with separate assessment sections. Within the unit sections I have different pages for the different lectures or seminars. The fact that you can organise it while you are making the notes save so much time as opposed to trying to save Word documents and then make sure they are in the right folders etc. also your notes are automatically saved so you don’t have to keep worrying about saving your work. This has defiantly been a life saver.

5. Scribzee

This is for the people who don’t take their laptops in to lectures or who’d rather write their notes with pen and paper. Scribzee is an app where you can scan your written notes on to your phone and then organise them in the sections, so it means that even when you don’t have your notebook you still have your notes. The only catch is that you have to have a Campus Notebook which can be expensive, but they are definitely worth it if you can store all your notes online. Personally, I export all my notes from the app and email them to myself so I can see them on my laptop.

There are just a couple of tools that I use, and they have made studying at uni so much easier. What do you think? Will you give them a go?