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PAC Tip: Organization and Productivity Apps

Do you ever feel disorganized, like you have trouble keeping track of tasks and due dates? There are apps that can help with that. In fact, Vassar College provides free access to some of these. Our Peer Academic Consultants can help with a variety of skills, including using organization and productivity apps effectively. Keep reading to learn about these online resources that are available to you.

What are productivity apps?

  • Apps that help you organize your tasks/to-do’s
  • Help you feel more productive as you can visualize your tasks and check them off when complete
  • Boost your productivity by motivating you to complete tasks!

What are some examples of productivity apps?

Google Workspace

Vassar College provides all students with Google Workspace for Education. This includes apps such as Google Drive to create documents, slides, spreadsheets, forms, and more. Everything saves automatically, so you never have to worry about losing your work! In addition, documents are easy to share, and multiple people can edit the document simultaneously.

When you go to your Gmail, you will see a bar on the right-hand side with a few symbols. These are Google Calendar, Keep, and Tasks. You can also add Google Meetings when you create events in Google Calendar.

Google Calendar

  • keep track of events and meetings
  • invite others to events when you create them
  • make multiple calendars to categorize events
  • add other people’s calendars to keep track of their schedule
  • color code your events

Google Keep

  • take notes
  • make checklists

Google Tasks

  • make tasks
  • add due dates and times

Microsoft 365

Vassar College also provides students with a Microsoft 365 account. This includes access to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. While these are similar to their Google counterparts, Microsoft allows for collaboration on these documents online or saving and working on an offline version. Additionally, if you are a STEM major, we highly recommend using Microsoft Excel for data processing and analysis because it is much more powerful than Google Sheets. 

To see all the apps that Microsoft 365 offers. This includes calendars, tasks, notes, drive, etc.

Other companies

If you dislike using Google or Microsoft, or you feel like they don’t work well for you, don’t worry! There is a plethora of apps and websites out there that can help you be more organized. Visit the link above to learn more about other organization and productivity apps available.

Need more help?

Check out the Peer Academic Consultants main page for more information on how to find support around this and other academic skills. Our Peer Academic Consultants (PAC) are also available for individual consultations during which we can discuss your academic skills and personalize these strategies to be most effective for you! If you would like to sign up for an individual consultation, please fill out the Individual Consultation Intake Form.

References

Google. (n.d.). Google Workspace: Secure Online Productivity & Collaboration tools.

Microsoft. (n.d.). Microsoft 365.

William & Mary. (n.d.). Time Management and Organization Apps for Students. Dean of Students Student Accessibility Services.