Author: scatty

When Apple began using the phrase “there’s an app for that” to market its newly invented iPhone a decade and a half ago, few people could have predicted just how specialized and wide-ranging modern digital smartphone applications would become. Today, there’s an app to help you organize nearly every aspect of your daily life.

Although keeping all the important elements of your life in order can be challenging to say the least, these five organization apps that can lead you into a far more efficient and productive future.

1. Microsoft To Do

An exceptional general organizer for upcoming and uncompleted tasks, Microsoft To Do combines the functionality of many digital tools and personal assistants within a single comprehensive package. It allows you to coordinate any number of personal “to do” lists while augmenting specific items on these lists with helpful reminder alarms, key written notes, detailed voice recordings, and related external documents. Although it is made by Microsoft, this app is available for iPhone and iPad as well as Android devices.

2. Akiflow

While “to do” apps are great for reminding you what needs to be done, daily planner apps can help you find the time you need to do it. When it comes to making an efficient schedule and sticking to it, no app provides more critical assistance than Akiflow. Make better use of your time through logical and orderly daily planning. By allocating specific tasks for specific times, you can more effectively process, control, and manage those tasks with Akiflow. This app is packed with advanced features to help you avoid overload, distraction, and over-scheduling. And each of these features comes with smart shortcuts, so you won’t waste precious time actually using Akiflow.

3. LastPass

Nothing can put a hitch in your day quite like a lost or misremembered password. In light of the mountain of usernames and passwords that average person must juggle, this has almost certainly happened you within the fairly recent past. Thanks to LastPass, you’ll never have to organize, manage, or even remember these passwords again. The LastPass Authenticator allows you can easily access any of your online accounts in one place without sacrificing security.

4. Evernote

Lightyears beyond your standard note-taking app, Evernote has features that range from multimedia file storage to slideshow presentation. To help you keep your life in order, it ties your personal notes to a broad spectrum of helpful features to quickly and effectively manage to-do lists, plan for tasks, arrange your ideas, and generally “organize your life.”

5. ActiveInbox

Even people who have other aspects of their lives in perfect order are likely to leave their email in considerable disarray. An app that links seamlessly with your various email accounts, ActiveInbox can help you organize your emails into a series of convenient followup tasks. Prevent incoming emails from getting lost in the shuffle by getting to each in order of relative importance. You can even take care of email responses well ahead of deadlines thanks to ActiveInbox’s convenient "send later" function. If a clean inbox is something you’ve only dreamed about, this is the personal organization app for you!

How do some people learn so quickly—even without studying? Then others spend days cramming and still not make the grade.

Science has some key insights about what’s really going on. Thankfully, anyone can apply them to learn more efficiently – read on to make sure you’re spending your learning time productively.

1. Start Learning Earlier

Whether you have to memorize a speech or learn new skills for work, studies suggest you should start earlier so you can spread learning out over a period of time and a number of sessions. 

2. Do It Right After You Learn It

Studies show that you’ll learn and remember something more thoroughly if you revisit, practice, and put it into practice closer to the time you first learned it vs. right before you need it.

For example, if you’re taking a course for your MBA, the most efficient time to study for the test two weeks from now is within a day or two of learning the information in class. 

In some cases, like learning names, you should try to use them within minutes of learning them.

Why does this work? You’re telling the brain this is important information. The brain takes heed and stores it in long-term memory.

3. Write It Down

If you can’t put something into practice right after you learn it, write it down. Not only are you once again telling your brain this is important; you’re adding kinetic learning to visual and auditory learning through this tactile experience.

In doing so, you’re creating multiple pathways in your brain to the same information. Studies show different parts of the brain activate when handwriting vs. typing. The regions activated with writing are associated with memory, and studies show this translates to better recall of learned information.

4. Sleep After Learning

Studies have shown if a person goes to sleep within 12 hours of learning they’re more likely to retain that information. Sleep is critical for memory in general. Lack of sleep leads to trouble learning and organizing new information as well as moving it to long-term storage and recalling it later.

5. Don’t Re-Read to Learn

It may seem like reading a textbook chapter or class notes over and over would make the information stick. But research shows the opposite happens because your brain tunes out repetitive information and the ideas get scrambled because you already know what’s coming next. 

It’s much more effective to read something, wait an hour, and then write down key information you remember.

There’s no harm in re-reading something to understand. But don’t confuse endless re-reading with learning.

6. Learn It Like You Have to Teach It

You’d want to remember this clearly if you had to teach someone later, wouldn’t you? 

Having this mindset while learning tells the brain to organize the information strategically so you can easily recall it later.

7. Exercise Regularly

Regular aerobic exercise increases the size of the hippocampus, a part of your brain responsible for helping you learn and apply new things. Scientists found the increase sufficient enough to completely reverse age-related hippocampus loss, which makes learning and memory harder as people age.

Additionally, exercising before learning and before you need to apply that learning increases oxygen to the brain, which improves brain function overall.

Put these 7 strategies to work for you. This is how to learn more efficiently.

All sorts of memory myths exist. They suggest that either you have it or you don’t. "I’m not good with names. I have a lousy memory. You’re so forgetful." If you’re not careful, having a terrible memory can become the running joke in your life.

But the truth is that memory is a skill. It’s learned and practiced. It can improve with age. Here’s how to master your memory now.

1. Watch What You Eat

The excessive saturated fat, refined carbohydrates, and alcohol consumption that come standard in the Standard American Diet (SAD) negatively impact long-term memory and cognitive function. 

Swap the less healthy foods for whole foods, mostly plants that are nutrient-dense with vitamins, minerals, healthy fats, and antioxidants. Around the world, diets rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts, and fish have been shown to protect the brain from memory loss and enhance memory function. 

2. Exercise for Long and Short-term Memory Improvements

Exercising delivers instant, short-term memory results. Get your blood pumping before a big test or job interview to improve your memory recall and performance. It does this both by reducing stress and increasing oxygen to memory centers. 

Over the long term, regular aerobic exercise increases the size of the hippocampus and the production of new neurons (brain cells) that form learning and memory pathways in the brain.

Both depression and aging can shrink the hippocampus. But exercise appears to stop and reverse this effect.

3. Develop Effective Stress Response

Stress doesn’t happen to you. Stress is how your body, mind, and emotions respond to a stressor. Learn and practice how you react to stress with deep breathing, counting to 10, and other stress management strategies.

High stress impairs higher cognitive functions like memory. And studies show managing it improves episodic memory.

Episodic memory is remembering what happened correctly. This reduces your risk of falling for gaslighting behaviors where someone tells you you’re "remembering it wrong".

4. Get Enough Sleep

Sleep plays a vital role in concentration, short-term memory learning, long-term memory storage, and memory recall later when needed. Lack of sleep can even change your perception of an event which could create false memories. 

To master memory, it looks like first, you need to secure your ZZZs.

5. Practice Good Memory Technique

With the above four in place, it’s time to focus on how people remember. Memory is not a complete log of your life. The brain only remembers what it thinks is important at that moment. It discards the rest—within a few minutes.

So, if you can’t remember names or where you parked, you’re likely not indicating to your brain that this is important. This often happens because you’re focused on something else, such as a bad past experience or a screaming child. So, learning to practice mindfulness at any moment helps. 

Try this Mindful Memory Mastery technique. Regardless of what you need to remember, follow these four quick steps:

1. Take a moment to make associations.
2. Organize information in your mind.
3. Say important details aloud. 
4. Actively recall the thing you want to remember a couple of minutes later. 

You just told the brain, "This is important. Remember it!". The brain takes note and stores this memory somewhere you can recall it later. This is how to master your memory.