Time Management Apps for Graduate Students: Balancing Research and Life

Time management is a unique skill anyone needs to embrace and benefit from. From a surface meaning, it appears simple, maybe being keen on your calendar. Once you have tasks piling up, then the challenges start knocking in. It becomes more challenging, especially when trying to balance research and life. You could be having your main work, probably in the military, raising kids, caring for your siblings or family, and other commitments. That is where you realize effective time management is a thorn of pain towards your success.

“Will I manage to do my homework?” That is a question many will ask, especially when there are lots of duties to undertake. That is why effective time management skills come in handy. You can get help from time management apps or tools to prioritize your tasks, track your progress, and utilize the available resources.

Understanding the Meaning of the Time Management App

We can define a time management application as an amazing app that has been developed to help people in tracking and optimizing the use of their time. The end goal is enhancing their productivity and attaining the set goals, be it in the education sector, career journey, or general life. Such an app may contain features like reminders, calendars, lists, and tools to set goals or objectives. As a user, you can get a chance to prioritize tasks, manage your schedules, and do away with procrastination.

Many such apps exist, like Trello, which has a visual project management tool allowing users to organize tasks into various lists and boards. You set due dates, use specific labels, describe your tasks with unique descriptions, and offer collaboration capabilities by sharing boards.

Advantages of Time Management Apps

Once you adopt using time management apps, there are several benefits you will enjoy. They include:

• Your productivity improves. With time management apps, you can easily prioritize your tasks and ensure you stay on course by focusing and completing the important ones first. When you strictly adhere to such priorities, you become more productive and improve efficiency.
• Becoming more organized. Time management apps offer platforms with reminders, calendars, and task management or tracking to help you become organized.
• Managing stress. Good time management apps help users avoid getting overwhelmed with busy schedules and avoid stress by breaking your tasks into smaller ones that you can easily manage.
• There is ease in tracking time. Time management apps are good to track the time you spend on certain tasks. It is easy to note those tasks where much time is wasted and adjust your habits.
• Set and track your goals. The apps have amazing tools where you can easily set goals and track your progress. You become more motivated as you strive to achieve your set goals.
• More productive collaboration. Time management apps can allow users to get a way of sharing tasks, files, and calendars. You end up with wonderful communication and improved teamwork.

Time Management Apps for Graduate Students

Let’s break down some of the best time management apps.

Forest

Graduate students can use this app to help in enhancing their focus capability while also improving their productivity. You stay motivated on a daily basis. Some of the important facts while using the app include:

• You get land to plant a virtual tree after every 25 minutes of undertaking a certain task. Once you start working on a given task, you keep away from distractions until the time elapses.
• If you remain focused, the plant or tree grows well. This happens as long as you keep away from distracting websites or away from your smartphone.
• If you happen to use your phone before the time elapses, the tree dies. You become self-motivated to ensure you grow a forest.

The app has an engaging and fun interface and helps people focus on particular habits. It is compatible with iOS, Android, and Google Chrome.

Google Calendar

This is a popular tool that can help you manage your schedules and appointments. Go with this app to schedule and manage events and tasks and apply reminders.

Google Calendar will help you plan your events, have much focus on work, manage tasks, and schedule your appointments. You can segment your calendar depending on your life and what you must do.

Let your study time and daily routine be set in the calendar. It can include class routines, personal work, and group schedules.

It is possible to share your calendar with others.

You can use the app on various platforms, including the web, Mac, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Android.

Apploye

This is a time-tracking app based on a given project and task. The interface presents more than 100 features. Apploye can allow you to enjoy the best of your time.

With the app, you can distinguish courses and subjects under the major category of task and project. You then track the time that you need to study. Once you choose the course (project) and subject (task), you then start your timer.

The app uses a Pomodoro timer to track time. You set time for focus and have the break sections. For example, you can have 25 minutes for focus and 5 minutes for resting. You can modify it as may be appropriate.

You can easily generate productivity measurements and reports in terms of timesheets. You can then compare your days.

The app is compatible with Linux, iOS, Web, Mac, Android, and Windows.

ClickUp

This app has an amazing interface to help you organize your tasks. You can classify your tasks and projects. Give them deadlines and set reminders.

It is possible to add documents or files and write short notes for certain tasks. The interface is so visual that you can mark your progress.

You can collaborate with others if you are working on the same research.

Other applications include:

• Reclaim;
• Trello;
• 2Do;
• Do;
• myHomework Student Planner.

Conclusion

With increasing demands in our daily lives, there is a need to strike a balance between your research and general life. You need to adopt time management as a skill. Select one time management app appropriate for you, and you are good to go.