Best Productivity Apps for English Learners

This is the most powerful resource  you have. And it's really limited.  

How many times have you started your week  thinking "I have the whole week in front of me,  

so I'm going to do X, Y, and Z first, then I'll  get to the studies/work/tasks I'd planned?" When  

you realise, it's Friday already and you haven't  done half of what you planned because you simply  

didn't have clarity about your priorities. There's  a feeling of procrastination when you want to do  

so many things. You don't know what to do, you  don't know where to start... You become paralyzed. 

The same is true for when you need to study  English. You probably have a coursebook or  

a textbook, whatever, just sitting on  the shelf gathering dust, or infinite  

websites and resources saved on your computer  that you haven't looked at in a long time. 

They also become a hidden form of  procrastination without you even realising it. 

So today, let's take a look  at some apps that can really  

help you with the tools that you need to beat  procrastination, make better use of your time, and  

achieve success while studying English no matter  the objective you're trying to accomplish with it. 

To start off, share with us the apps  you normally use to help you study  

English. Pause the video for a second and write  it in the comments down below "I normally use  

[name of the app], what I  like about it is that..."

A productive day starts with a good night’s sleep,  but not only that! Sleeping helps your brain  

better remember the things you've learned. The first step that you should do for a few  

weeks in a row before adding other tasks  is to go to bed every day at the same time,  

even if you don't fall asleep right away. To get you accustomed to that,  

Insight Timer has numerous guided  meditations, bedtime stories, and relaxing  

audios to help you fall asleep more easily. "Make yourself as comfortable as possible."  

You can also play relaxing songs  or nature sounds on Spotify.  

If you have a TV in your room, YouTube  has videos with those sounds as well,  

but played on black background videos so you are  not disturbed by the brightness of the screen.

You may be wondering what meditation has to do  with English or building a productive routine! 

However, nowadays it’s so easy to lose focus,  

become distracted, or even constantly switch  between tasks when sitting down to study. 

Meditation can be a huge help for your  concentration and help you remain present and  

focused on what you need to get done. My favorite  apps to help you either get started on building  

on the habit of meditating are Lojong and One  Giant Mind. They have short, easy-to-follow  

guided meditations that will help you feel  more grounded. I highly recommend you do it  

in the morning right after you wake up or during  the day while taking a break between studies. 

You can choose one of their activities  while sitting down on your bed.  

Start easy with 5 minutes, and as the weeks go by,  you can increase the time you spend meditating.

The third pillar of being more productive is  having an exercise routine. Exercising helps  

you study and learn better by combating stress,  raising your energy levels, and making you feel  

happier and energized. You'll see how you'll  feel more efficient at all tasks in your life. 

Just like meditation, choose an activity you like  such as walking (then, running), dancing, martial  

arts, and start slowly to build on the habits. I really like to use an app called Run Keeper  

even when I'm not running. It helps you track  your progress when you walk and can be quite  

motivating to see your performance increasing. Another great thing about exercises like  

walking or running is that you can  do them while you listen to podcasts,  

like the RealLife English Podcast. By downloading our free app, you'll have  

access to our podcasts and our Beyond Borders Talk  Show with interviews with some of the world’s most  

influential experts made especially for English  learners. The best thing is once you sit down  

to study, you can listen to the episode again  while following the transcript and right after,  

connect with someone to practice your English.  That's right! By downloading the RealLife English  

App, you get to practice your English  speaking for free whenever you want. 

So download it now in the Google  Play or the Apple App Store  

or simply download it with this link here or  the one I've left in the description down below.

Now, after adjusting to a great routine  of sleeping, meditating, and exercising,  

when it's time to get your studies done, there  are a few apps that will help you with that. 

Google keep. The first thing I'd recommend is  to have a note taking app such as Google Keep,  

Notepad, or Evernote within hand's reach. One  of the things that most impairs our productivity  

is to get drawn by thoughts and ideas that  have nothing to do with the task at hand.  

So, it'll make a huge difference to have a  place like these where you can write down  

ideas that pop up into your mind so they  don't distract you or break down your focus.

You'd be surprised by how many learners tell  me they have trouble focusing on their studies.  

There's a technique called Pomodoro that can help  you while doing that. This technique consists of  

many short breaks from time to time while working.  For example, you work or study for 25 minutes  

straight, without interruption, and then take a  break from the screen or the books for 5 minutes.  

After 4 cycles, you can take a larger break. The tide App has a section that combines the  

Pomodoro Timer with sounds  to help you concentrate.

Now, if you are more into games, there's an app  called Habitica that will transform real-life  

productivity in order to help you accomplish  things, you can add your habits, to-do list,  

and goals, and the app will transform it into  an experience in which those situations become  

a role-playing game with many features  such as armour, pets, and even quests!

Notion is one of the most complete apps  to manage tasks and content, but it can  

be quite overwhelming to get started on it. So,  I'd recommend you take a look at Trello first.  

It helps you organise your studying projects into  a board and at one glance what you're working on,  

what you need to do, and what you have  already done. It's like a whiteboard,  

filled with lots of sticky notes,  with each note as a task for you. 

Now, when it comes to Notion, if you want to get  started, our guest Shannon explained a really  

nice idea on how she organises her progress  in the more than 15 languages she's studied.

But I also am a Notion junkie. So I keep  I have like a, it's almost like a journal, 

but not really, but it's like my daily  log. So it's like, what exercise I did,  

what languages I studied, what I did to study  those languages, and then a bunch of other habits  

that I'm trying to build. And I track that every  single day. And then at the bottom, it tallies  

like a percentage of like, what percentage I've  actually studied which language and all that. 

One of the things that can kill your productivity  is the frustration of not remembering what you  

studied and having to revisit all your notes every  time. You get the feeling that you're always stuck  

in the same place, not being able to remember  and then when you get a chance to speak you may  

have a lot of vocabulary that you understand, but  you don't seem to find them back in your memory  

when it's your turn to say something. Well, apps like Anki and Memrise can help you  

with that. They are spaced repetition software and  what they do is give reminders of the words you  

need to study based on the things you get right.  You can add audio and pictures so they are also  

good to practice listening and pronunciation. Gabriel Wyner, talked with Ethan about the  

importance of personalisation when it comes to  creating your flashcards on these platforms.

The main piece though is what are you reviewing,  because if the thing you're reviewing is "girl."  

What's the word for girl? And all you're doing is  sort of deepening this idea that girl and Девочка  

are the same then all you're doing is deepening  a kind of shallow uninteresting memory. But if  

instead you're showing the pictures, you chose  to store that emotional reaction of "Whoa, that  

wasn't what I expected" and we say "what's that?"  and you're like "Девочка" that's what that is.  

Then we are we are allowing you  to review an emotional experience  

and then you throw that in the computer program  and you're like "okay, well, when should I-- When  

should I have that emotional experience next?"  and it's like "oh well, looks like your-- your  

next due for that emotional woah in two weeks."  Oh you got it right? Okay, cool. We're gonna wait  

a month and then we're gonna stick-- You know,  these pictures that you thought were emotionally  

relevant in front of you and see where you  feel there. And so that ends up being the whole  

system. It's just-- it's a system for dumping  emotional stuff into your head at the right rate.