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Recommended for keeping on top of assignments and exams.

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MyStudyLife | Free Student Planner & Study App

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Transform your study habits and get better grades with MyStudyLife’s game-changing student planner. Get organized, improve time management and achieve success.

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One Note is a good way to organise notes, links and files. You can sync across your devices and share notebooks with friends and family.

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Gather your thoughts, then make them even better

Revise your notes with type, highlighting, or ink annotations. With OneNote across all your devices, you'll never miss a flash of inspiration.

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Microsoft OneNote Digital Note Taking App | Microsoft 365

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Microsoft OneNote has your digital notebook needs covered. With OneNote 2016 we've made our notebook organizer tools even stronger and collaboration easier.

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Rock, Pebbles, Sand is a really interesting metaphor for how you prioritise your time

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Rock, Pebbles, Sand is a really interesting metaphor for how you prioritise your time

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Take a look and have a think about what the rocks are in your life. Are you spending your time on stuff that's important to you? If not, you may need to re-balance.

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This is an accessible summary of Brian Tracy's book on procrastination and productivity.

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Stop Procrastinating: EAT THAT FROG! by Brian Tracy

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Trello is great for organising projects and it's recommended by Phil

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Trello is great for organising projects and it's recommended by Phil

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You can organise multiple lists and projects and share with colleagues/friends and family

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Capture, organize, and tackle your to-dos from anywhere | Trello

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Make the impossible, possible with Trello. The ultimate tool to boost your productivity. Escape the clutter and chaos—stay efficient with Inbox, Boards, and Planner from anywhere, even on mobile.

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It's an app blocker with a timer. It's free. You can donate to help build a real forest. Give it a try!

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Forest is an app helping you stay away from your smartphone and stay focused on your work.

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This blog has some interesting articles on the impact of technology on how we work and think.

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April 30th, 2018 · 12 comments
Joshua Francis Newport. Born April 25, 2018. Joins his brothers Max and Asa as another future Study Hacker...

April 21st, 2018 · 40 comments An Exciting Way to Make a Living
Alex Honnold is an adventure climber. He specializes in free solo ascents, which means he climbs tall things with no ropes. If he falls, he dies.

He's perhaps most famous for being the first person to free solo Yosemite's 3000-foot El Capitan wall (see above).

Not long ago, at a live event at the USC Performance Science Institute, Honnold described an interesting technique he used to help prepare for his El Capitan ascent:

"For the full month before I soloed El Cap, I erased all social media off of my phone...I [also] stopped responding to email so much that I stopped getting emails..."

Free soloing turns out to be an endeavor that's as cognitively demanding as it is physically demanding. Honnold's distraction-free month was about getting his mind into shape for the big climb.

Alex Honnold's feats are clearly awe inspiring, but I'm mentioning him here for another reason: his cognitive training provides a hint about a major transformation that might soon upend the world of knowledge work.

Read more "

April 11th, 2018 · 45 comments A Revealing Memo
A couple weeks ago, BuzzFeed leaked a memo written by Facebook VP Andrew "Boz" Bosworth in the summer of 2016. It contained the following controversial passage:

"[Connecting people] can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.

And still we connect people.

The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good."

The reaction to this memo has been muted by the larger data privacy issues afflicting Facebook at the moment, but those who did object, did so mainly on the grounds that Boz was being callous about the potential for this platform to cause harm.

In my opinion, however, this memo contains hints of an even more insidious mindset...

Read more "

March 28th, 2018 · 58 comments The Declutter Experiment
In late 2017, as part of my research for a book I'm writing on digital minimalism, I invited my mailing list subscribers to participate in an experiment I called the digital declutter.

The idea was simple. During the month of January, 2018, participants would take a break from "optional technologies" in their lives, including, notably, social media. At the end of the 31-day period, the participants would then rebuild their digital lives starting from a blank slate - only allowing back in technologies for which they could provide a compelling motivation.

I expected around 40 - 50 people would agree to participate in this admittedly disruptive exercise.
My guess was wrong.
More than 1,600 people signed up. We even received national attention when the New York Times wrote a nice article about the experiment.

Since January, I've been reading through the hundreds of reports that participants sent me about their experience with the digital declutter. I've been learning a lot from these case studies, but I want to focus here on one observation in particular that caught my attention: when freed from standard digital distractions, participants often overhauled their free time in massively positive ways.
Here are some real examples of this behavior from my digital declutter experiment...
Read more "

March 25th, 2018 · 72 comments A Social Transition
Last week, I wrote a blog post emphasizing the distinction between the social internet and social media. The former describes the internet's ability to enable connection, learning, and expression. The latter describes the attempt of a small number of large companies to monetize these capabilities inside walled-garden, monopoly platforms.

My argument is that you can embrace the social internet without having to become a "gadget" inside the algorithmic attention economy machinations of the social media conglomerates. As noted previously, I think this is the right answer for those who are fed up with the dehumanizing aspects of social media, but are reluctant to give up altogether on the potential of the internet to bring people together.

The key follow up question, of course, is how to fruitfully engage with the social internet outside the convenient confines of social media. In my last post I pointed toward one possibility: the development of open social protocols that support the network effect usefulness of large social networks without a centralized company in charge.

This solution, however, requires that you wait for others to make progress on a somewhat complicated technological agenda.

In this post, I want to discuss two additional approaches that individuals can put in place right now to begin their transition from social media to the social internet.

The first approach provides an intermediate step - a way to minimize the worst effects of social media without fully leaving its ecosystem. The second approach describes a more severe separation.

Read more "

March 20th, 2018 · 58 comments Split Reactions
As someone who has publicly criticized the major social media platforms for years, I've become familiar with the common arguments surrounding this topic.

One of the more interesting trends I've observed about this conversation is the split reaction to social media I used to hear from the political left before the 2016 election scrambled everything.

This split was defined largely by age.

Younger progressives were fiercely in favor of social media and were often appalled that people like me might say something negative about these services.

I remember one particularly lively radio debate, held on the Canadian equivalent of NPR, in which one of the other guests fought my suggestion that users should perform a personal cost/benefit analysis for these tools by arguing that even discussing this strategy was problematic as it might trick people into not using social media - a self-evident tragedy.

Older progressives, by contrast, were more skeptical of these platforms. This was especially true of tech-savvy activists like Jaron Lanier or Douglas Rushkoff who were connected to earlier techno-utopian movements.

On closer analysis, this gap seemed to stem from how these different cohorts understood social media's relationship to the internet.

Read more "

March 15th, 2018 · 9 comments The Death of a Genius
Earlier this week, Stephen Hawking died. It was a sad day for lovers of science.

Hawking's breakthrough work from 1974 provided the world a new understanding of black holes. It also unified, for the first time, quantum mechanics with gravity - laying the conceptual foundation on which any attempt at a unified theory of physics must build.

There is, however, another important insight to extract from Hawking's efforts - one that's less often discussed...

Read more "

March 3rd, 2018 · 33 comments An Important Essay
Earlier this month, Tim Wu wrote an important 2500-word essay for the New York Times's Sunday Review. It was titled: "The Tyranny of Convenience."

Wu's piece is both deep and scattered - an indication that the target of his inquiry, the role of "convenience" in shaping the culture and economy of the last century, is both crucial and under-explored.

His thesis begins with the claim that we've increasingly oriented our lives around convenience, which has benefits, such as reducing drudgery, but at the same time can leech individuality and character from our lives.

This basic idea is not new. Mid-century writers like Richard Yates were already quite concerned about related issues like suburban conformity.

But Wu distinguishes his analysis by identifying how consumer-oriented companies reacted to the destabilization of the 1960's counterculture by instead focusing on making the quest for individuality itself more convenient.

Read more "

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April 30th, 2018 · 12 comments Joshua Francis Newport. Born April 25, 2018. Joins his brothers Max and Asa as another future Study Hacker... April 21st, 2018 · 40 comments An Exciting Way to Make a Living Alex Honnold is an adventure climber.

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This is an interesting article on why it's hard to focus on the important tasks in life.

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Back in the days when American presidents didn't spend literally every waking hour gratifying their appetite for cruelty or cheeseburgers, Dwight Eisenhower came up with a classic time management technique, later named the Eisenhower Matrix. (If you've read one chapter of one productivity book, you've encountered it.) His point, in short, was that every potential activity is either urgent or not, and either important or not. Life's primary challenge is to make time for the important stuff that isn't urgent, even though it doesn't feel pressing, while avoiding the urgent stuff that isn't important, even though it does feel pressing.

Although Eisenhower did also create Nasa, his insight isn't rocket science. We're drawn to urgent tasks because they tend to be easier or more straightforward, and because the payoffs are immediate: keeping your boss happy or paying next month's rent, say, as opposed to realising your grandest ambitions or fostering long-term social change. Plus, it's just nice to get them off your plate, so you're free of that nagging sense of tasks undone - even though the end result, if you keep acting that way, is a life filled up with trivialities.

But a recent study in the Journal of Consumer Research confirms what I've long suspected: when urgency rears its head, we become even less rational than Eisenhower knew. Researchers created situations in which they eliminated all those justifications for choosing the urgent over the important - level of difficulty, immediacy of payoff, etcetera - and found people still chose the more urgent option. In other words, even if some task on your to-do list isn't easier, and isn't a better way to please your boss or keep yourself solvent or anything else - even if there's no reason to do it other than that someone's persuaded you it's "urgent" - you'll still be biased in its favour.

When it comes to getting our priorities straight, we're like the target market for those dodgy ads for commemorative royal wedding plates or battery-powered avocado-slicers, available at a discount while stocks last. It's fake urgency, yet it works: act now, or you'll miss out! Oh, you didn't need or want it in the first place? Never mind! Act now!

Yet merely knowing about our tendency to prioritise urgency over importance rarely leads to better choices. That's because the knowing is intellectual, whereas urgency is an emotional or even bodily matter: you act from a twinge of discomfort, a clench in the stomach, a racing heart. The best trick I've found is to practise consciously distrusting those feelings: to learn to treat the sense of urgency as a sign something probably isn't the best use of your time. (You might still decide to act on it, of course, but you'll be doing so more rationally.) Besides, even when there's a legitimate reason for acting on urgency, you're probably overestimating its significance. As the author Tim Ferriss has written, it's worth learning to "let small bad things happen", so that big good things eventually come to pass. There are many situations in which you need to act fast if you want to avoid a negative outcome. But if that negative outcome doesn't matter much, avoiding it might not be the best use of your time.

Philosopher Damon Young's short book Distraction explains at the deepest level why we're so often tempted to flee the meaningful for the trivial.

Topics

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Focus on what's important, not just urgent | Oliver Burkeman

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Back in the days when American presidents didn't spend literally every waking hour gratifying their appetite for cruelty or cheeseburgers, Dwight Eisenhower came up with a classic time management technique, later named the Eisenhower Matrix. (If you've read one chapter of one productivity book, you've encountered it.)

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If you love gaming then Epic Win may be the app for you. You can turn your To Do list into a quest and win gold.

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EpicWin - the iPhone to-do list app, turn your tasks into quests and level-up your life.

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It's a calendar app with reminders, and you can share calendars with friends, family or colleagues.

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TimeTree - Connect your moments. Connect to the future.

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If you connect your time with those who share your interests and the people you hang out with, you will be able to plan an even more outstanding future.

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Funny, but truthful!

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Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

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Tim Urban knows that procrastination doesn’t make sense, but he’s never been able to shake his habit of waiting until the last minute to get things done. In this hilarious and insightful talk, Urban takes us on a journey through YouTube binges, Wikipedia rabbit holes and bouts of staring out the window -- and encourages us to think harder about what we’re really procrastinating on, before we run out of time.

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This video focuses on student life. Useful tips but you may want to skip over the ad for an online product at the end!

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7 Things Organized People Do That You (Probably) Don't Do

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An interesting discussion about how motivation and procrastination are linked - and why not being too hard on yourself may help you get tasks done.

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All in the Mind - The psychology of motivation and procrastination - BBC Sounds

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Catch up on your favourite BBC radio show from your favourite DJ right here, whenever you like. Listen without limits with BBC Sounds.

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Interesting insights from a MIND blogger

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Having been mentally and physically strong all my life, fifteen months ago I crashed. Big time. I have only just returned to work following a year of absence. After 16 years of working full-time, this was a great shock to me. It was incredibly hard. It was a year during which I lost all the energy, enthusiasm and vitality that had previously come so naturally to me. I lost interest in myself and in those around me and spent the first couple of months essentially clinging to the sofa.

I was referred for therapy but, although I thought it was a good idea, it didn't start brilliantly. My therapist seemed too young and naïve to understand what I was going through. Besides, I couldn't bear the fact that she spent so much time talking about the importance of a routine. Of exercise. Of eating well. Of sleeping regular hours. She'd ask me to tell her what I had done the day before; and what I'd be doing the following day. It seemed like such a waste of time - this was all common sense but I certainly didn't have the energy or the willpower to stick to a routine at this moment in my life!

"I sat on the sofa and tried to calm the rising panic in my chest."

To my great surprise, things changed one day and so too did my perspective. Having worked from home for a couple of weeks to keep me company, my husband decided to go into the office. By 8.30am the house was silent. He had gone and my daughters had left for school. I sat on the sofa and tried to calm the rising panic in my chest. The silence was deafening. I had nothing to do. Nowhere to go. No-one to speak to. What was I supposed to do all day? I vaguely recollected conversations with my therapist. Perhaps this was what she meant about the need for routine?

In the months that followed, I tried hard to carve out a routine for myself. Early morning walks with the dog; healthy eating (giving up beer was the hardest part); and lots of exercise. Most days I would have preferred to roll over and go back to sleep. But, most of all, the exercise was good for tiring out my whirring mind and calming the adrenalin that constantly pumped around my body.

"I found myself alone, under the effects of alcohol and in a very risky situation."

After six months, I began to feel better and consequently complacent. I suddenly started to feel less of a need to force myself to exercise on a daily basis. My poor appetite had improved and I started to eat too much of the wrong things. As well as this, my better mood gave me the excuse I needed to buy beer again as I no longer felt at risk of it bringing me down.

Three weeks on I found myself alone, under the effects of alcohol and in a very risky situation which led my husband to rush to the beach from work to 'make me safe.' Following a number of beers, I had put my life in danger without any concern for the consequences. Understandably, both he and my therapist asked me why. Why after a period of apparent stability did my mood escalate from one to a hundred so suddenly? The explanation from me that I had received an upsetting email seemed to hang in the air and mock me as they stared at me in despair.

"And there you have a perfect cocktail for a crisis."

Following extensive dissection of the day's events, I had to admit that the weeks preceding that day had contributed too. Although it seemed minor at the time, by stopping exercise, eating crap and drinking beer every day, I'd pressed the self-destruct button long before. By the time that day arrived, and I received an email I felt I couldn't cope with, I was in no state to deal with it. Lack of exercise meant I was wired with adrenalin; a rubbish diet meant I felt lethargic; and I'd become convinced I needed beer to help me relax.

And there you have a perfect cocktail for a crisis. The debate about what constitutes self-care has been discussed a lot recently. I've come to realise that what once would have been a lazy few weeks in my life, can now actually compromise my mental health. So, if I choose to decide to abandon my routine, I either have to be sure that I am feeling particularly mentally strong or, that I am ready to accept the consequences.

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Building a routine you can stick to in daily life may not sound important, but for some people routine is what helps to keep them grounded. Claire blogs about her experience of the difference in life with, and without, routine.

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Why routines are helpful

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Routine plays an important part in our physical and mental wellbeing, especially in these uncertain times. The government has advised us to keep a regular routine for the benefit of our mental health.

The government has announced a £5 million grant for leading mental health charities. The fund will help these charities to expand their services to support people struggling with their mental health during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Why is routine important?

It's surprising how you can so easily fall out of a routine, especially in these strange times where we're spending a lot of time indoors. Whether you're self-isolating, working from home or social distancing, keeping up your daily routine is still important. Sticking to a routine helps to keep the mind occupied, makes us feel more in control of everything, and helps reduce stress levels.

How to establish a new routine

If your usual daily routine has come to a halt, that's okay! You can make a new one for the current situation you're in.

Working from home? Set your alarm to your usual time and get up and ready for the day. Take your usual morning shower and dress in actual clothes, not your pyjamas, this will set you up mentally and physically for the day ahead.

Don't skip lunch! Break up your day and take a moment to relax from whatever you're doing whether it's working, teaching the children or cleaning the house.

Get some fresh air. Enjoy a brief walk or jog around the block, just make sure you stay at least two metres away from anyone else that isn't from your household. You'll feel the benefits of the fresh air and it will reduce your cabin fever. (Always wash your hands when you return home)

Stay connected. Keep in touch with friends and family digitally, whether it's a text or by video call, make sure your loved ones are okay. It helps to know you're not alone and that everyone is going through this.

Self-care

Incorporating self-care into your daily routine is vital, especially in these uncertain times when stress is running high. We often dismiss basic self-care tasks when we're stressed and anxious, but now more than ever is when we should be looking after ourselves. Basic self-care includes:

All these tasks we do automatically as part of a regular daily routine, but it's important to make a self-care routine to keep ourselves in tip-top condition!

What help is out there?

Mind are one of the UK's leading mental health charities and they offer plenty of help and guidance on their website including articles, online chat, helpline and urgent help tool.

Samaritans operate a 24/7 helpline which is free to call on 116 123. They can also offer you support by email. Their email address is jo@samaritans.org.
24/7 Health and Wellbeing Support
General & Medical Healthcare offer access to complementary health and wellbeing services with all health insurance policies which includes telephone counselling, self-help programmes and everyday support.
24/7 GP Advice Line
All our healthcare policies include the 24/7 GP Advice Line which allows you to speak to a doctor confidentially over the phone at any time of the day without waiting in a queue.

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The importance of routine for your mental health

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Routine plays an important part in our physical and mental wellbeing, especially in these uncertain times. The government has advised us to keep a regular routine for the benefit of our mental health. The government has announced a £5 million grant for leading mental health charities.

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This refers to time or resources that you set aside so that you can respond to events or issues that occur. So, for example, you should allow some contingency time in your planning so that if things go wrong or take longer than you expect, you don't miss your deadline.

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These are the things that you are going to produce by carrying out your project. So, for your PhD the main deliverable will be your thesis, but you might also want to produce conference posters, academic papers, a book etc. Your planning should focus on how you're going to produce the deliverables.

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We talk about dependency when one activity in your plan depends on other things happening in order that it can take place. For example, you can't analyse your data until you've collected the data. If your data collection is delayed, then the analysis will be delayed too. This is important when you are planning and updating your plan.

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This is a project planning tool, used in many industries and you can use it both for long term project planning and for day to day task management.

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In project terms, a milestone is a significant point during the life of your project. For your thesis, milestones might be the drafting of individual chapters, or the completion of a phase of your research. Identifying milestones is really helpful to keep you focused - at the start of your PhD your viva is several years away, so you might want to focus on a nearer goal or deliverable to keep you motivated.

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This is time, but also the places, materials, data, technologies and other people that you need to complete your project. Access to these resources will have an impact on what you can do, and when. Your planning needs to make sure that you use resources when you have access to them, that you make sure you focus and achieve what you want by using those resources, and that you think about contingencies relating to the resources. For example, if you need access to a group of people who are your research participants - what will you do if they decide not to take part?

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Find out more about the 7 essential mental nutrients

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This article looks at different types of happiness and the role work plays.

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Finding the right work-life balance is by no means a new issue in our society. But the tension between the two has been heightened by the pandemic, with workers increasingly dwelling over the nature of their work, its meaning and purpose, and how these affect their quality of life.
You can listen to more articles from The Conversation, narrated by Noa, here.
Studies suggest people are leaving or planning to leave their employers in record numbers in 2021 - a " great resignation " that appears to have been precipitated by these reflections. But if we're all reconsidering where and how work slots into our lives, what should we be aiming at?

It's easy to believe that if only we didn't need to work, or we could work far fewer hours, we'd be happier, living a life of hedonic experiences in all their healthy and unhealthy forms. But this fails to explain why some retirees pick up freelance jobs and some lottery winners go straight back to work.

Striking the perfect work-life balance, if there is such a thing, isn't necessarily about tinkering with when, where and how we work - it's a question of why we work. And that means understanding sources of happiness that might not be so obvious to us, but which have crept into view over the course of the pandemic.

Attempts to find a better work-life balance are well merited. Work is consistently and positively related to our wellbeing and constitutes a large part of our identity. Ask yourself who you are, and very soon you'll resort to describing what you do for work.

Our jobs can provide us with a sense of competence, which contributes to wellbeing. Researchers have demonstrated not only that labour leads to validation but that, when these feelings are threatened, we're particularly drawn to activities that require effort - often some form of work - because these demonstrate our ability to shape our environment, confirming our identities as competent individuals.

Work even seems to makes us happier in circumstances when we'd rather opt for leisure. This was demonstrated by a series of clever experiments in which participants had the option to be idle (waiting in a room for 15 minutes for an experiment to start) or to be busy (walking for 15 minutes to another venue to participate in an experiment). Very few participants chose to be busy, unless they were forced to make the walk, or given a reason to (being told there was chocolate at the other venue).

Yet the researchers found that those who'd spent 15 minutes walking ended up significantly happier than those who'd spent 15 minutes waiting - no matter whether they'd had a choice or a chocolate or neither. In other words, busyness contributes to happiness even when you think you'd prefer to be idle. Animals seem to get this instinctively: in experiments, most would rather work for food than get it for free.

Eudaimonic happiness

The idea that work, or putting effort into tasks, contributes to our general wellbeing is closely related to the psychological concept of eudaimonic happiness. This is the sort of happiness that we derive from optimal functioning and realising our potential. Research has shown that work and effort is central to eudaimonic happiness, explaining that satisfaction and pride you feel on completing a gruelling task.

On the other side of the work-life balance stands hedonic happiness, which is defined as the presence of positive feelings such as cheerfulness and the relative scarcity of negative feelings such as sadness or anger. We know that hedonic happiness offers empirical mental and physical health benefits, and that leisure is a great way to pursue hedonic happiness.

But even in the realm of leisure, our unconscious orientation towards busyness lurks in the background. A recent study has suggested that there really is such a thing as too much free time - and that our subjective wellbeing actually begins to drop if we have more than five hours of it in a day. Whiling away effortless days on the beach doesn't seem to be the key to long-term happiness.

This might explain why some people prefer to expend significant effort during their leisure time. Researchers have likened this to compiling an experiential CV, sampling unique but potentially unpleasant or even painful experiences - at the extremes, this might be spending a night in an ice hotel, or joining an endurance desert race. People who take part in these forms of "leisure" typically talk about fulfilling personal goals, making progress and accumulating accomplishments - all features of eudaimonic happiness, not the hedonism we associate with leisure.

The real balance

This orientation sits well with a new concept in the field of wellbeing studies: that a rich and diverse experiential happiness is the third component of a "good life", in addition to hedonic and eudaimonic happiness.

Across nine countries and tens of thousands of participants, researchers recently found that most people (over 50% in each country) would still prefer a happy life typified by hedonic happiness. But around a quarter prefer a meaningful life embodied by eudaimonic happiness, and a small but nevertheless significant amount of people (about 10-15% in each country) choose to pursue a rich and diverse experiential life.

Given these different approaches to life, perhaps the key to long-lasting wellbeing is to consider which lifestyle suits you best: hedonic, eudaimonic or experiential. Rather than pitching work against life, the real balance to strike post-pandemic is between these three sources of happiness.

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Work-life balance: what really makes us happy might surprise you

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Finding the right work-life balance is by no means a new issue in our society. But the tension between the two has been heightened by the pandemic, with workers increasingly dwelling over the nature of their work, its meaning and purpose, and how these affect their quality of life.

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Savannah recommends Focus Keeper as an app that helps with the Pomodoro technique.

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Focus Keeper helps you keep your productivity high avoiding burnout using the timer. Work with time. Not against it!

Here is what this app offers:
* Simple, beautiful and intuitive interface.
* Task Management
* Customize focus sessions, goals, and sounds.
* Track your productivity with insightful charts.
* Universal(iPhone/iPad) app with iCloud support.

Basic Focus Steps - It's all about focusing your work efforts in timed 25-minute chunks, with a 5-minute break in between each burst of activity.
1) Choose a task to be done.
2) Set the timer for 25 minutes.
3) Focus on the task until the timer rings
4) Take a short break (just do something relaxing for 5 minutes)
5) Once you've completed 4 focus sessions, take a longer break. (20~30 minutes)

Features:
* Adjust the timer with your fingers just like you do with real egg-timer.
* Next session starts automatically when the current session ends.
* Track your progress with two different charts (14 days and 30 days)
* Set your daily goal (number of Focus Sessions per day)
* Set how many Focus Sessions you want to finish before taking a long break(number of Focus per round)
* Customize the length of Focus Session, short break, and long break.
* Choose your ticking from 10 different ticking sounds and your own music library.
* Choose your alarm from 14 different ring sounds.
* Set any sounds separately for the short break, long break, and Focus session.
* Receive alarm notifications even when the app is running in the background.
* Today Widget for Focus Sessions
* Icon Badge shows how much time you left to finish the current session in the home screen Focus Keeper icon when the timer is ticking.
* Focus Reminder: If you're struggling to make a habit of using Focus Keeper, this could come in hand. You can set when you want to be notified to use Focus Keeper through weekdays and weekends.
* Option for resetting the Focus Count at midnight automatically. Now you can set your own reset time.
* Set different volume sounds for each ticking and alarm sound.

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SUBSCRIPTION PRICING & TERMS

Focus Keeper is free to download. Pro Subscription gives you unlimited access to our premium content and features.

- Focus Keeper's three auto-renewing subscription options are $2.99 monthly or $9.99 annually
- These prices are for United States customers. Pricing in other countries may vary, and actual charges may be converted to your local currency depending on the country of residence.
- Payment will be charged to your iTunes Account at confirmation of your subscription
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[ Support: support@pixo.co ]

a lifesaver

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a serial procrastinator and so when I started my A-levels I was in desperate need of something to keep me on track. This app works wonders and it only requires me to concentrate for 25 minutes at a time before I'm allowed a break and this way a whole day's work seems a lot less intimidating. Additionally after working for four 25-minute sessions the app rewards you with a long break - enough time to go for some fresh air, do some exercise, or (let's be honest here) watch an episode of a TV show. This app changed the way I work and allows me to work a full 8-hour day of studying at home without becoming run-down or losing focus.

Highly recommend

I'm in my second year of a levels and have been struggling to get work done due to laziness, the pandemic, lack of motivation etc. My friend recommended this app to me so I decided to put it to use today and I have been working for 4 solid sessions in my first day using this! Bare in mind I only started using this app 6 hours ago. The beeping sound makes it easier to drift into work but if it is annoying u can always turn it down! It also prevents u from using ur phone for social media if u leave it on the clock screen. I highly recommend this app for anyone trying to revise!!!

So useful

I absolutely love this timer, it's so simple and effective and i'm always at my most productive when i am using it. I love the ability to change the colours and sounds and the longer break function is just another function which keeps me focussed.
The one thing that i find could be a big improvement though would be if it could work with the multi-window feature on the ipad as i work with other windows open often and it would be useful to see my progress without having to constantly open and close the app. i also find that i often accidentally pause the timer when using gestures to swap between windows.

The developer, PIXO Incorporation, indicated that the app's privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

Privacy practices may vary based on, for example, the features you use or your age. Learn More

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‎Focus Keeper helps you keep your productivity high avoiding burnout using the timer. Work with time. Not against it! Here is what this app offers: * Simple, beautiful and intuitive interface. * Task Management * Customize focus sessions, goals, and sounds. * Track your productivity with insightf...

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The current situation means that a routine is more crucial to our motivation than ever!

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Key Takeaways

Some people love to have a solid daily routine, while others shudder at the thought of having a predictable schedule. During times of great stress, however, maintaining structure and routine can help you feel more organized and in control.

Having a routine can be helpful at any time, particularly if you are trying to establish healthy habits, but these routines can be particularly important when aspects of your life feel uncertain.

The disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically altered many people's normal routines, which makes it that much harder to cope with the stress that people are feeling.

Press Play for Advice On Creating Good Habits

A Sudden Lack of Structure

Many people are either working from home or faced with the prospect of an unknown period of unemployment. Those working at home may quickly discover that the constant isolation and lack of a normal schedule can be mentally taxing.

Rachel Goldman, PhD

A lack of structure and routine can actually exacerbate feelings of distress and make you pay more attention to the source of your problems. As Rachel Goldman, PhD, a psychologist and clinical assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine, explains: "If people don't have structure and are sitting around with less to focus on, then they also probably will find themselves thinking about the stressful situation more, which can also lead to additional stress and anxiety."

One way to get out of this cycle that promotes ruminating over the source of your stress is to maintain some structure and routine throughout your day.

The Benefits of Having a Routine

Research has consistently shown that routines can play an important role in mental health. One study, for example, found that routines could help people better manage stress and anxiety.

Having a regular routine can help you:

Lower stress levels

Form good daily habits

Take better care of your health

Feel more productive

Feel more focused

Getting necessary tasks out of the way can also help you find more time for healthy behaviors like exercise and leave you more time to enjoy fun activities and hobbies.

Focus on Things You Can Control

Managing your own behaviors can help you feel more in control of the situation. Goldman recommends focusing on the things that are within your power to control.

Rachel Goldman, PhD

The key is to create a routine that adds structure and a sense of predictability to your day. Of course, your schedule may change somewhat depending on the day of the week, but sticking to a basic structure for when you will wake, eat, work, do activities, and sleep can help you feel less stressed out and more organized.

Structuring your day also ensures that you accomplish those basic tasks that must be done, which will leave you with the time to schedule in other things that you want or need to accomplish.

Follow a Routine That Supports Your Health

There are some things that you can make a part of your daily routine to help manage stress levels. These include:

Staying active and getting regular daily exercise

Making sure that you are well-rested

Eating healthy meals on a regular schedule

Setting realistic goals

Trying to stay positive

Preparing for challenges but not ruminating on things you can't control

Staying in touch with friends and family members

Setting aside time for activities that you enjoy

Of course, the situation you personally are coping with can also affect how easy or hard it is to stick to a daily routine. Stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 have left many people with blank schedules, which can be a daunting prospect. It's important to find things to fill your time so you don't end up engaging in unhelpful or unhealthy behaviors.

Make Your List

One helpful activity is to make a list of the things that you normally do during the day. Include everything from work to meal preparation to household chores. Once you have an idea of the basic tasks you need to accomplish, you can start creating a general outline for what you might need to accomplish each day to stay on track.

While its important to get the essentials done, be sure to find things that you can look forward to, whether it's watching a favorite television show or calling up a friend. Making these little rewards a part of your routine can help you stay upbeat and focused when you are working on a task that you might not enjoy as much.

Find What Works for You

Is it better to have a structured daily schedule or just a general to-do list for the day? Some people might thrive with a highly structured daily schedule that outlines activities in specific blocks of time, while others might do well with a loose list of things they need to get done in the day.

How do you decide which approach is right for you? Consider your motivations as well as what you need to get done. "If it is something that is of high importance and needs to get done on a specific day, then scheduling it into your routine and carving out that time may be necessary to make sure it gets accomplished," Goldman recommends.

In other words, deliberately schedule a specific time to take care of those high priority tasks. Knowing that you have that time set aside for those tasks will leave you free to focus on using the rest of your time effectively. Goldman also suggests that it may be helpful to schedule things that you may not be motivated to do.

Rachel Goldman, PhD

Knowing that you need to do those tasks at a certain time on a certain day will help keep you on track and hopefully overcome the urge to just keep putting them off.

Remember It Takes Time and Practice

Just like trying to create a new habit, starting and sticking to a new routine takes some time and effort. You know yourself best, so if something doesn't seem to be working, try tweaking your schedule to make it work for your needs.

Goldman recommends paying attention to how you feel throughout the day in order to determine what times of day you are the most productive. "If you feel like each day you feel unmotivated and lethargic at a certain time, then that is a sign that you may need a mental break at that time," she says.

When you find yourself in those moments, think about what you might need to feel better and get motivated. That might mean that you need to take a break, go for a walk, have a snack, or spend some time working on a hobby.

"Plans don't always go as planned, though, so remember to be kind to yourself," says Goldman. "This is not the time to put extra pressure and expectations on yourself. It's not easy to create new routines, or add structure to a day, when our lives feel completely disrupted and turned upside down, so it may take some time to get used to this "new" routine and be able to feel accomplished."

What This Means For You

The information in this article is current as of the date listed, which means newer information may be available when you read this. For the most recent updates on COVID-19, visit our coronavirus news page.

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The Importance of Maintaining Structure and Routine During Stressful Times

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Some people love to have a solid daily routine, while others shudder at the thought of having a predictable schedule. During times of great stress, however, maintaining structure and routine can help you feel more organized and in control.

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You can download these to help with note making

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Time & Workload & Procrastination Async 2324 TO SHARE

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Recommended by a Game Art student, this app helps you to create good habits and get tasks done using gamification.

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Habitica is a free habit and productivity app that treats your real life like a game. Habitica can help you achieve your goals to become healthy and happy.

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Oliver Burkeman talks about his book, Four Thousand Weeks, and how our attempts to master time are inevitably flawed.

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Oliver Burkeman on Four Thousand Weeks | 5x15

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This covers a lot of topics - just navigate your way to the parts that interest you.