By Rohan Anne, Webmaster
For me, Monday through Friday used to be a trial of extreme endurance. I would rush home and frantically finish my gigantic stack of homework as quickly as possible, praying I could get to bed by a decent time.
As someone who struggles with time management on a day-to-day basis, getting my work done was a heavy ordeal from freshman to junior year. But when I discovered time management apps last summer, my whole world changed.
Notion, a productivity app that provides a full workspace for you to manage any assignment, allows me to keep track of all my work in one app by tracking the specific status of certain assignments and also creating multiple reminders for big deadlines. Additionally, Google Calendar lets me create reminders for specific events that I need to attend so that in the midst of academic chaos, I can still remember where I need to be. These apps have transformed my workload from one causing constant anxiety and dread to a methodical system that always gets me to bed on time.
Even though these time management apps may seem like even more work at first, they can really help students regulate their workload. In a research study by Ajou University and Seoul National University, 46 college students were tested on their abilities to set goals, strategize the completion of work, monitor their progress and be motivated to complete their work. When implementing a smartphone application for these students, the researchers observed that the app had an overall positive impact on the students’ ability to set goals and strategize the use of their time.
It might be more work at first to set up these apps and track your workload daily. But whenever I’ve used these apps to make a plan, I could take a deep breath and relax about my assignments. Instead of frantically panicking and assuming the worst, I would formulate a plan on how to finish all of my work during the week, before it even reached Monday. That additional work was definitely worth it because it has brought my anxiety down to minimal levels every day.
The use of time management apps will also make you more efficient, as proven by a survey-based study conducted by the National Conference on Education on 25 students from the National University of Modern Languages. 65% of the students were able to complete their tasks according to their schedule because of productivity apps. These apps don’t just help in reducing stress: They genuinely reduce the amount of time it takes to do work. By organizing all my work into specific days and making a strategy to complete them each day, I find that it ends up taking way less time to finish a day of work, as I spend less time worrying about whether I can complete my assignments and more time actually working on them. Time management apps were the best thing to ever happen to me. They’ve helped me to manage all the small pieces of work and focus on the true big goals.
Rohan Anne can be reached at [email protected].
