I’ve been trying out online productivity tools lately, and been at times impressed with what I’ve found. These can be a real help when you’re trying to juggle several thousand pages of reading material, researching your patient for clinical, washing your uniform, taking care of aging parents, kids, the dog, the cat, the ferret, etc.

My favorite amoungst those that are specifically designed for students is studyrails.com. It’s basically a super fancy calendar where you input your classes, the amount of time you need to study for each, and when you want to study. You can also add in assignments for each class and when they need to be completed. The program will send you text or email reminders of your schedule which could be a very hand thing, especially if you can’t get full online access but can access this feature with your mobile phone. I like the color coding too. Another interesting feature is the ability to allow another person to login and observe how you’re spending you’re time. This is obviously created for the “helicopter parents” who are still hovering over their kids when they go to college. However, I can see how this would be a useful tool for study buddies too, with another person keeping you accountable for your time so you don’t get jammed up when exams roll around.

The other program I’m digging these days is rememberthemilk.com. Of course, I’m originally from Wisconsin so anything that starts out with a cow icon is going to charm me. But cultural affinity with their mascot aside, I’ve started using rememberthemilk.com in my own life and like it pretty well so far. The site offers some features that work really well for me, including the ability to tag tasks and use the tags to sort; I added, for example, a “www” tag to all my online tasks so when I sit at the computer I can easily see exactly what I need to accomplish while I am there. I also like their optional text feature which you can use to arrange to get all your task due on a certain date sent to your cell phone on that date.