8 must-have applications for life in the 21st century

1. KeePass
2. Pocket
3. Evernote
4. Duolingo
5. Memrize
6. Drive
7. Workflowy
8. AskMeEvery

KeePass

What it does: Portable password manager

Cost:Free
[My] Usage: Daily
URL: http://keepass.info/

Remembering passwords is the bane of life in the 21st century, thanks to KeePass you won’t have to worry about that anymore.

Portable, no back doors, lightweight, open-source and immensely secure – as far as free password managers go, this is the best. In many cases it’s better than many of the paid software one may get.

Why is this great?

1. It auto-generates every password for you – choose from a 16-bit to 128-bit alphanumeric string. Then it stores all these passwords in an encrypted database, accessible only by a master-password (and possibly a key file).  Brute forcing these passwords is not feasible as KeePass does quite a large number of hash checks, that takes a few seconds to complete.
2. It can be used with cloud storage. Keep it on dropbox/drive and you can access your password from anywhere
3. 2-factor authentication – You have one master password and can also have KeePass authenticate with a unique file or image. Just to satisfy your paranoia that someone is trying to steal your passwords.
4. Automatic login! Yes you heard correctly! If you’re going to the trouble of using a password manager then it works best if you have your browsers remove any login information after each session. Hence, you would have to login each time you open a new browsing session. Fear not! pressing ctrl+a will auto-fill in the login boxes with the username and password you have for the specific website (since KeePass can be made to link login information with a URL)
5. Lead a stress-free life

Pocket

What it does: Browser plugin that saves webpages to an online profile

Cost: Free
[My] Usage: Daily
URL: http://getpocket.com/

The idea behind pocket is to have an online store for your favourite articles and webpages. Accessible online and offline via mobile devices and your regular desktop. All this is done by clicking the chrome/firefox add-in button while you are on the webpage you wish to store.

You can access all your saved pages by logging into your account on getpocket.com Sounds simple enough and that is actually its major selling point. Found an article but you’re too busy to read? Pocket. Sick and tired of storing links of pages on notepad/word? Pocket them.

I’m warning you, pocket is so great, it’s actually addictive. I used to pocket an article here and there. Now, I pocket everything, every interesting thing I find online, I pocket it for future reference.

Go get it and join me. Together, we will pocket the entire internet.

Evernote

What it does: Store + organise notes/images

Cost: Free + premium model available
[My] Usage: Weekly
URL:

Ah yes, Evernote, where to begin…

When it comes to organising notes and collecting data for projects, this is THE tool. The concept of Evernote is that the user creates and organises notes on an Evernote application that you install on your machine. These notes are then stored on the Evernote cloud. Compare this to making notes in Word and storing them on your machine or dropbox/drive, it’s already a step forward since they can be indexed and organised in “notebook stacks” (e.g you can group every note relating to university in one stack) and so on.

On-top of this, it has tons of functionality built in.

Features:

1. Synced with the cloud
2. Cross-platform support, works on ipad, android, pc and mac
3. Email notes to your notebooks! Yes! Forward important/informative emails to your evernote mailbox and it will be saved to your notes
4. Attach files/images and voice recordings to notes and take webcam photos from your laptop in real
5. See something interesting while reading an article online? Clipit and send it to Evernote! Mark/highlight text in the article before saving it
6. Set up email reminders for notes
7. Record the geographical location where each note was written. Perfect for travelling journalists

… and countless others

It’s honestly the best tool I have found for writing, storing and organising notes for projects that I work on. Very useful for 3rd year.

Duolingo

What it does: “Duolingo is a free language-learning website and crowdsourced text translation platform”

Cost: Free
[My] Usage: Weekly
URL: http://www.duolingo.com/

No blog post  can do this application justice. Go and experience it for yourself. It currently has language courses in French, Spanish, Portugese, English, German and Italian. You start at the top of the language tree and work your way through simple present tense until you cover everything to do with that language. The way it teaches the languages is great because it incorporates vocal games (you need to speak the language and it will analyse your dialect) and competition between friends.

Memrize

What it does: Learning application that associates images with trivia to help you remember

Cost: Free
[My] Usage: weekly
URL: http://www.memrise.com/

Similar to Duolingo in that it is awesome for learning, however it is not just for languages and its methods are different. As the name suggests, it works through memorising, usually images. You are given phrases and trivia and associated images that relate to that piece of trivia.

One major selling point Memrize has over Duolingo is that the content is generated by the community. Anyone can create a course and add images to phrases. This allows for a much more diverse set of courses and possibly a better experience.

It is also very game like. There exists a concept of planting a seed (starting a course) and watering that seed (practising) until you can harvest the flower (completing the course), which, if nothing else is just something to keep you from getting bored.

Drive

What it does: Google Cloud Storage

Cost: Free for first 10gb
[My] Usage: Monthly (backups)
URL: https://drive.google.com/

I personally prefer this to Dropbox since I find it integrates better with android on my HTC. Also the ability to create collaborative Google docs is a huge plus!

Workflowy

What it does: List organiser

Cost: Free for the first 500 items
[My] Usage: Daily
URL:  https://workflowy.com/

If only I could use this at work!

I love workflowy because of its minimalistic UI whilst having enough functionality to actually get things organised.

Imagine writing a list of to-dos on a notepad, but then being able to hide parts of the to-dos you’re not interested in, searching particular types of to-dos (coding, reseach ect. in my case) and it is all stored online so you can access it anywhere.

Cool isn’t it?

AskMeEvery

What it does: Emails you with questions and produces stats on your answers

Cost: free
[My] Usage: No longer use it (I got tired of replying!)
URL: http://askmeevery.com/

This service attempts to solve the problem of tracking and monitoring self progress or statistics. If you’re trying to monitor how long you run each day or what time you sleep every night, don’t bother with a spreadsheet anymore, AskMeEvery is here for you.

You can set  it up to ask you specific questions every week via email (you specify the days and times) and you then reply to that email with your answer, for example:

Email: “How far did I run today?”
Reply: “5km”

AskMeEvery will the collate your results over time and produce graphs and metrics for you, so you dont have to.

It’s a useful idea, however I got tired of the emails!

As fun as it is to write about awesome opportunities and all the cool stuff you get to do at university & beyond, there is a slightly more realistic side to all this. Unfortunately, this hardly ever gets mentioned (maybe it’s because we are always trying to look like we’re having a good time?).

If you’ve heard the phrase “The Grind” before, then you know what I am talking about. The (daily) grind is the boring, tired routine you fall into after the excitement and motivation you had at the beginning of something fades away. It’s normal and inevitable. In my case this has started to set in now that I am 5 months into my internship. I feel as though I have reached a point where nothing is that new anymore, I know what to expect from the day ahead and how to go about tackling the challenges I face. Although things do come out of nowhere and break the routine, they’re not as frequent as they were.

During the first two months of my internship, I would come home after a day of work and have this ton of energy left over. I would go to gym or for a run, cook a healthy meal, read or work on a side project (I used to take online German language courses) before finally getting a full night’s sleep and doing it all over again the next day. Now? On my worst days I would come home, pop a frozen meal in the oven, log onto facebook and skype and doddle about while watching a series on the television before crawling into bed and passing out.

Wake up, work, facebook+TV and greasy food and then bed. It’s madness but that is my grind, it happens every year for a few weeks. If this or something similar happens to you, then worry not, it’s normal and if you want it to pass then you will find your way out.

So in essence, you reach the grind when you get deeply stuck into the routine of doing the things you set out to do at the start. You get to the point where you forget why you wanted to do it in the first place. It’s a place everyone must pass through if they want to achieve something significant, the winners are those who can ride it out, the ones who never quit. Do you think top athletes enjoy every training session at 5am? Do you think scientists enjoy every single experiment/project they’ve worked on? Of course not! Nothing worth achieving ever comes easily, sacrifices must be made and patience is a must.

What I am saying here is that the grind is not a bad thing, actually it is the most important part of the journey to your objective/goal.

I recently attended several startup events and whilst working with so many young entrepreneurs, something dawned on me. Anyone can get excited about starting a company and everybody will start pitching in ideas and scheming and coming up with plans. However, only those who are serious about their goals will make it through the grind. It is meant to weed out the weak and will make you stronger by teaching you patience, perseverance and resilience. This is especially true of a university course and later on, employment.

The golden question is how to get out…

I don’t yet know how I’ll get myself out but for now, I’ll start with an extremely cold shower and take it from there. I used to beat myself up about not being efficient everyday and when I used to see that I was loosing motivation but now I understand that it’s inevitable.  If you ever find yourself in a grind (whether it’s during a university course or at work), remember that it’s fine and normal. Remind yourself why you are where you are, keep at it, keep pushing and remember quitting was never an option.
At the end of the day, however bad a situation you find yourself in, it’s unlikely it would be as bad as this: