We’ve all seen the endless lists of study apps and productivity hacks floating around the internet. They’re useful—sometimes. But they rarely acknowledge what staying motivated actually feels like when you’re balancing classes, work, personal obligations, and the inevitable end-of-semester whirlwind.

Being in my first semester and experiencing the online learning environment, I’ve taken some time to reflect on the tools and strategies that have actually helped me stay grounded, organized and on track this semester. In this post, I reflect on various tools I’ve explored to help me meet deadlines and produce the best work, even when classes began ramping up in intensity. I hope some of these tools will help you, too. 

Productivity Apps

Notion

Endlessly versatile and aesthetically pleasing, Notion has been a mainstay of mine for years to manage time across various aspects of my life. Beyond the myriads of templates to choose from, it’s easy to tailor a page to your own liking and make it what you want it to be.

Most effective usages:

• To-do lists: Creating sections within Notion dedicated to weekly or daily checklists is one of the easiest ways to track progress visually. You can format tasks with toggles, color-coded tags or even embed due dates so they automatically appear in your calendar view.
• Dashboards: Design a personal “home base” where all your semester essentials live—links to syllabi, assignment databases, reading trackers and a calendar of upcoming deadlines. Having everything gathered in one place reduces tab-hopping and makes it easier to orient yourself at the start of each study session.
• Databases: This is where Notion really shines. Whether you create a master assignment tracker, a reading log or a project board with statuses like “Not Started,” “In Progress” and “Done,” database views make it easy to sort, filter and see exactly what needs attention each week.

OneNote

One of many note-taking apps out there, OneNote is clean and simple to use, and available for free for all iSchool students as a part of the Microsoft Office Suite offered by SJSU.

Most effective usages

• Separate notebooks for each class: This keeps everything tidy and minimizes the scramble of remembering where you saved something. You can also create sections inside each notebook (e.g., lectures, readings, assignments and discussion posts) for smoother organization.
• Layered notetaking: Whether you prefer typing, highlighting PDFs directly or handwriting on a tablet, OneNote is flexible. Having your notes, embedded articles and screenshots all in one place makes studying for finals so much easier.
• ePortfolio prep: Since OneNote is built for long-term organization, it’s a great place to collect artifacts and reflections for your ePortfolio as the semester goes on. Keeping everything in a designated notebook means you’ll already have the pieces you need when it’s time to put it together.

Time Management Apps

Google Calendar

Sometimes overlooked, GCal is an easy-to-use and handy tool for scheduling weekly and monthly workflows. Offered free, it’s an incredibly accessible way to streamline your weekly commitments. If you’re more of a visual learner, like me, the colorful blocks representing events are a useful way to visually structure time. Messing around with the various features yourself will give you a feel for what helps you stay organized.

Depending on your own personal work style, plan out your workload for the upcoming week or month, and check it regularly to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. By having deadlines and other pertinent information regarding your workload recorded, GCal will notify you about schedule conflicts when accepting a meeting invitation or recording events on other calendars.

Most effective usages

• Layer different calendars: Subscribing to my school calendar, work calendar and personal calendar allows for each of my commitments to show up together, which is useful in for deeper and multi-faceted organization
• Task vs. Event: Using the task option is a great way to record deadlines for upcoming assignments. Clicking ‘all day’ allows it to show up at the top of the day, for easier viewing. And the strikethrough that happens after submitting an assignment is satisfying.
• Focus time: Use this feature to block off time in your day for uninterrupted work. 

Canvas Calendar

If simplicity is more your thing, using Canvas’ calendar to keep track of work is a great idea. All assignment due dates will show in your calendar, along with meetings and events for iSchool students to join. While it’s a great resource, it’s important to check your class syllabus and weekly modules yourself to make sure all assignments are accounted for. 

Most effective usages:

• Agenda: A visually clean list of upcoming deadlines and events. Using the agenda feature is a good way to see all upcoming work side by side, and account for deadlines.
• Calendar: A monthly overview of workload. This is a good way to see what days assignment deadlines fall on, to let you get into your own groove of anticipated workdays

Study Tips

Along with the aforementioned apps, being a good student is a skill you learn over time and a muscle you must routinely flex. You know yourself best, so listen to yourself and reflect on times you’ve been most successful and what specifically you did that brought you there. 

• Listen to your energy levels: I am always most productive first thing in the morning, so by planning a block of time right when I wake up to knock out assignments and lectures, I can relax the rest of the day knowing my to-do list is significantly smaller. If you have the flexibility to move things around based upon when you’re most equipped to stay focused, scheduling out other daily commitments around it can help things fall into place.
• Short bursts vs. Long haul: Study strategies like the Pomodoro Technique are proven ways for many people to stay productive. The technique is simple and easy to follow: 25 minutes of active work and 5 minutes of rest. Change the time to suit the task. This is a great way to manage time, but it’s okay if it doesn’t work for you. As I mentioned, I do much better when I complete work in large chunks of time, resulting in multiple consecutive hours of uninterrupted focus. 
• Rest: Arguably, the most important tip of them all: If you aren’t getting adequate rest in between commitments, your fuse for work will be much shorter. Scheduling your week in advance is a good way to break things up, in turn freeing up time and ensuring you have a dedicated rest period and time of day when you set work aside. 

Overall Thoughts

As the semester comes to a close, reflect on how things worked well for you and what could be improved. If you’re like me and it’s your first semester of graduate school, it’s okay if it took a little bit to get to where you’d like to be in terms of effective workload management, or if you didn’t hit that place at all. Above all, listen to yourself and adjust your strategies and apps to best suit your unique needs. If you have any tips that helped you throughout the semester, feel free to share them below!