The best productivity apps for students

Struggling to get stuff done? Get off Facebook and use the internet to improve your work rate instead
blank to do list
Turn "to do" into "today" by making the most of apps and online resources. Photograph: fStop/Alamy fStop / Alamy/Alamy

More people are spending more time online, and it's damaging our productivity. As a student the internet, especially social media, can be incredibly distracting and addictive – dangerous, even.

Hardcore bloggers are suffering too and the latest trend is to disconnect for a year. Grist writer David Roberts recently announced he's taking a break because 10 years of constant web surfing has started to do strange things to his brain.

Unplugging entirely isn't an option for students but there's no doubt that avoiding the likes of Twitter and Facebook would boost productivity. Site blockers such as LeechBlock (Firefox) and Nanny (Chrome) will prevent access to specific – or all – sites entirely, or between specified hours.

If you think going cold turkey might be too much of a shock to the system, you can configure the add-ons to allow for a certain amount of access per hour, creating a work-reward balance.

Shutting out these sites could do more than just improve your grades. Research from the American Psychological Association found that frequent, long periods of use can lead to health issues such as depression and anxiety. Although, the same research praises social media as a method of engaging with students.

If that sounds too extreme, there are add-ons that humorously embrace procrastination. "Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?", says Do It (Tomorrow). This task manager gives you the option to bump today's tasks to tomorrow (but no further). Perhaps actively putting things off makes you aware that you're procrastinating, making you more likely to do tasks on the day they were set. Perhaps you'll forever be "doing it tomorrow".

Once you've broken away from the web's counter-productive clutches, you can do some work. Wolfram Alpha is a huge knowledge engine that sounds like it's straight from a dystopian sci-fi film script: "We aim to make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything."

It covers an enormous range of topics and can calculate serious-looking equations, as well as the nutritional information for M&Ms. Weirdly, it doesn't know who One Direction or Caitlin Moran are. If you're new to a topic, it's a good starting point, a way to get grounded before moving onto books and journal articles.

Finding research material has be made easier by apps like Library Anywhere. A number of universities have added searchable library catalogues to the service, along with floor plans, opening hours and PC availability. A small number of universities (Huddersfield, Warwick) have developed their own library apps. They are often easier and more pleasant to navigate than the clunky intranet search engines.

Finally, adding citations and the bibliography to an assignment is usually left to the last minute. It's boring, finicky and easy to get wrong. A number of reference generator apps are available. Ay Class Apps offer a large range that generate a reference by scanning a book's barcode.

However, for most assignments you will use more than just books; there will be journals, online papers and even videos to refer to. Queen's University Belfast have a free, online reference generator that creates different styles of reference, including Harvard style, and works for different mediums.

Knuckling down and starting that paper may always be hard, but we should be using the internet to help, not hinder.