For myself and many other college students, getting work done can be hard, really hard. With so many distractions now, from Snapchat to TikTok, it sometimes feels impossible to sit down and get ANYTHING done.
Luckily, I have spent years perfecting my study skills and developing new habits to work more efficiently. Here is a list of some of my favorite study tools that you can also use to hopefully get your best grades ever this school year!
- Flora
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Flora is free on the App Store and helps you stay away from your phone plus save the environment at the same time. You enter however long you want to stay off your phone, and it “plants” a virtual tree. If you leave the app before your time runs out, you kill the tree, but if you successfully stay off your phone, you plant it.
The best part is, if you feel like you need more of an incentive to stay off your phone, you can even put bet real money. If you break before the time runs out, that money goes to plant a tree in real life. Flora also allows you to link your Facebook account to the app so you can see the trees your friends plant or even compete against together. This app tops the list of my favorite study tools, as it an aesthetically pleasing lifesaver!
- Lo-fi Music
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Having some soothing background music to accompany you can help make all the difference in creating a pleasant study environment. My personal favorite kind of study music is lo-fi, which are the sounds that would typically be regarded as “imperfections” in the recording process of hip-hop music. Yet these imperfections alone make a relaxing, aesthetic beat that helps you concentrate and relax. If you search lo-fi on Youtube or Spotify, plenty of music options will come up. My favorite is the “lofi hip hop radio – beats to study/relax to” 24-hour live stream on the channel ChilledCow. The live stream also displays an aesthetic video of a cartoon girl and her cat studying by a window, making me feel like I am right there with her. I always put this on in the background of my homework/study sessions, and I have noticed I get my work done with a lot less stress. It even makes me look forward to my study time a little bit more!
- Momentum
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Momentum is a free, chrome extension that replaces the regular chrome startup page with a beautiful dashboard to help with productivity. It displays the time, along with a place for you to type in goals or a to-do list. A new background picture and a motivational quote appear every day, which makes it even more exciting. For studying, I like to write something like “get work done,” as my goal, then write my individual assignments in the to-do list. Every time I open chrome, I am reminded to be productive and stay motivated!
- An Area Dedicated to Studying
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Of course, the most important thing is to have an area dedicated to studying. It doesn’t matter if it is a desk, your dorm’s study lounge, or your favorite spot on the quad, as long as it isn’t your bed or in front of the television. Studying in a place that promotes leisure time can be harmful to your study habits and cause you to become distracted or fall asleep. I always study at my desk, which I have decorated just the way I like it. I have a salt lamp, small plants, and a cute organizer for my pens and pencils on my desk! It may sound crazy, but it helps more than you would think.
I hope these tips will lead to better study sessions in the future!