With finals week upon us, it’s time for one thing and one thing only: desperate, panicked study sessions fueled by can after can of sugar-packed energy drinks that last for dozens of hours on end. The clock is ticking. Every minute counts. You’re going to need every second if you want a shot at passing that one class. With these Chrome extensions and apps, you might just be able to juice the necessary amount of cramming out of your free time this week.
StayFocusd – The internet is probably the worst place on Earth to try and get anything done. YouTube has literally several years worth of cat videos. Reddit’s always there with an endless page of moderately humorous bullshit. Twitter’s going to have something new every second. Procrastination will be the death of you. Procrastination is just a click away, and clearly you’re an addict (How else did you end up in this situation?).
Get an intervention with StayFocusd. Simply enough, this handy little tool will set a timer for any troublesome website that gets you sidetracked. Then after you’ve set your allotted time, it will block access to the site for the rest of the day. It’s a blunt tool, but effective nonetheless. When you know that you’ve only got 10 minutes of Facebook to use, that “quick break” becomes much more quick. If things get really bad, you can even unleash the “Nuclear Option.” It will block all your blacklisted websites for a set number of hours. It’s the perfect tool for those weak in self-control.
Pomodoro Timers – Everyone goes into a marathon study session with honest intentions. Hours at a time, with no distractions. Just you and the deadly 10-page essay that “can’t be done the night before.” But in reality, this method is akin to sprinting a marathon. We’re all human and that means taking healthy breaks every once in awhile.
Pomodoro Timers help you to put a schedule on those breaks, and allow you to maximize endurance. The schedule is simple – 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of break. Rinse, repeat and occasionally take a longer 15 minute step away from your project. There are countless timers for the Pomodoro system online, all working in essentially the same way. Moosti.com is simple to use and works in any browser. Used well, and you just might be able to make it through that 8-hour study marathon with your sanity intact.
Cite This For Me – Citations at the end of a research paper are the bane of all human existence. You’ve finished writing a masterwork argument that draws back to countless sources throughout the internet – now it’s time to revisit all of those pages and catalog them in the particular set of dreary formatting nuances that your professor prefers.
Save invaluable time on this step with the Chrome tool Cite This For Me. With the single click of a button, Cite This For Me scans the relevant webpage and outputs a neat citation in the format of your choice. Then just copy, paste and move on. It’s not foolproof, but will save you immeasurable time on the more tedious aspects of writing citations. Move through a stack of waiting tabs in seconds! Finish that paper and move on to the other more important paper you also need to be writing!
Follow Chris Berg on Twitter @Mushroomer25