You may find one of the most effective ways to use technology to further your productivity is to circumscribe your own access to it. Consider deleting some apps as a means of eliminating your temptation to waste time. If you discover that you spend too much time on a given site or sites, simply block with Leechblock for Firefox, StayFocusd for Chrome, and WasteNoTime for Safari.
Consider deleting apps like facebook that you spend a great deal of time using on all but one of your devices, which you only use during times of planned non-productivity.
Resources on handling technology productively:
http://matt.might.net/articles/cripple-your-technology
http://matt.might.net/articles/productivity-tips-hints-hacks-tricks-for-grad-students-academics/
Useful Apps:
- Focus: Pomodoro System
http://stripenight.com/tomato/
- To-do Lists
- Text Editor
- Project Management
- File Sync
- Calendar
- Handling Data
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets
- Notebooks
http://www.nextscientist.com/evernote-for-research-phd/
http://www.nextscientist.com/online-tools-for-digital-scientists/
- Mindfulness meditation
https://www.headspace.com/headspace-meditation-app
https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/caps/workshops-and-discussions/koru-mindfulness-and-meditation-class
- Spaced Repetition System based language learning.
