LIST: Apps that can boost your productivity for studying
Studying doesn't have to feel like a dreaded chore and hitting the books can be a fulfilling and rewarding activity.
Burning the midnight oil can be made more manageable with the help of apps that can boost your productivity and help you get past common hurdles that can tempt you to laze around.
Looking for tools to get you started with your acads? PhilSTAR L!fe has gathered some of the best of the best that you can download on your gadgets:
Forest
Want to pass with flying colors while helping Mother Nature at the same time? You can hit these two birds with one stone through Forest, an app that motivates you to stay focused on your tasks at hand by making you plant a virtual tree for a specified amount of time.
The tree then grows as you busy yourself with your tasks, but once you exit the app to do other things halfway through your goal, it will wither and die. You can also lose your virtual coins, which you can use to buy more tree varieties.
The app has partnered with non-profit organization Tree for the Future, to plant real trees on Earth. According to their website, when users save up to 2,5000 virtual coins they earn in the app and use them to donate a real tree, the Forest team taps their partner and creates planting orders.
This productive and environmentally-friendly app is available on iOS, iPadOS and Android, and is also available as a browser extension on the Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-ons.
Tide
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Music and sounds can play a vital role in setting the mood and keeping you energized to accomplish even the most boring tasks.
If you’re one of those people who often have trouble concentrating on schoolwork without good music, then Tide is the app for you. With its focus on “sleep, meditation, relax, and focus,” it provides you with massive audio to help you relieve stress and stay focused on whatever you're doing.
These audios range from nature soundscapes such as flowing rivers and rains to everyday ambiances like wind chimes and keys of a typewriter.
Tide is available on iOS, iPadOS, and Android.
Upbase
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Even when you’re feeling focused and productive, piling assignments and projects can get overwhelming.
Luckily, there are a lot of task management tools to help you out, including Upbase.
Touted as a tool designed to boost team members’ productivity, Upbase combines the best features of a project management tool, a to-do list app, and a daily planner within a single platform.
It can help you set reminders for deadlines, block distractions with a Pomodoro timer and curated ambient sounds, adjust tasks that need to be prioritized, plan your weeks and days ahead, jot down ideas, to-dos, and reflections, and more.
Upbase is available on the web, iOS, and Android. It also has a Chrome extension.
Habitica
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To truly make studying and doing schoolwork stimulating, it’s best to make it a habit.
You can download Habitica to help you with this. It’s a free habit-building and productivity app that can motivate you to do your household chores, work tasks, creative projects, fitness goals, back-to-school routines, and more all while immersing you in a fun role-playing game.
The way it works is that you create an avatar and add tasks, chores, or goals you’d like to work on. When you do something in real life, check it off in the app and receive gold, experience, and items that can be used in-game.
You can team up with friends for extra accountability, and by completing tasks, you can battle fierce foes, collect tons of gear and pets, and more.
The app features automatically repeating tasks scheduled for your daily, weekly, or monthly routines, a flexible habit tracker for tasks you want to do multiple times a day or only once in a while, a traditional to-do list for tasks that only need to be done once, and color-coded tasks and streak counters that help you see how you’re doing at a glance.
Habitica is available on iOS and Android devices, as well as an extension on Chrome.
Freedom
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In the end, no matter what apps you try to download to keep yourself productive, all of this work can go down the drain if your fingers can’t resist the temptation to scroll through apps like Facebook and TikTok.
But Freedom can take away your freedom (no pun intended) to check your social media with its app and website blocking capabilities. While it seems ridiculous to have to use an app to keep yourself from opening other apps, social media addiction is a real thing, and Freedom is your best bet to manage your screen time.
It allows you to block things that can distract you such as emails and addictive games, and if you’re really in need of a focus boost, it can also block your whole internet connection.
Freedom is available to download on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android.