College is a rough time. We’re apparently full-fledged adults, and yet we still live off ramen noodles and dinosaur chicken nuggets. It’s akin to riding a bike with training wheels—everyone says you’re doing great, but deep down, you know that there’s a bit of extra stability built in there, and that you’re going to fall on your ass the moment that that extra bit of stability comes off. College is adulthood with training wheels, and anyone who tells you something different is probably lying to make themselves feel better.
Still, there are a few things that you can do to make that transition from college into the real world a bit smoother—you can train yourself to become more productive, get a good night’s sleep, and even save a bit of money. Better yet, you can do it all from the comfort of your feety-pajamas. Think of these websites as your helmet, elbow pads, and navigation system, as you take off the training wheels and evolve into a full-fledged adult.
Habitica
Pokemon GO is all the rage, but while Niantic’s new app has fixed your exercise problem, the same can’t be said about your other bad habits. Enter Habitica. The website runs as a game, where you can customize your avatar and battle monsters with friends. How do you power-up? You complete the items on your to-do list. Completed items give you a boost, as do good habits; bad habits will hurt you. It requires a certain level of honesty and accountability, but by getting you to care about the game, Habitica slowly helps you to be more productive.
Keep Me Out
We’ve all been there: The paper is due at midnight, you’ve got three pages and four hours left, and yet you can’t quit toggling between Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Keep Me Out will help you stay off social media while you’re working; all you need to do is set the timer, and for that period, Keep Me Out will warn or block you if you check that website. Stay away from social media (with a little help), tackle your homework, and get your life back.
Tomato Timer
Tomato Timer follows the Pomodoro technique for productivity. Basically, the technique works in cycles: You work for 25 minutes, and take a five-minute break. After four 25-minute cycles, you take a 10-minute break. Modern neuroscience clocks the human attention span at about 20 minutes, and the brain breaks help you to go back in, focused and refreshed.
Mint
If you’ve ever worried about money, Mint is your solution. Connecting your bank accounts allows Mint to analyze your spending and create a personalized budget. You can set goals for yourself, track your spending to see where your money goes, and even check your credit. The more you learn about what you’re spending now, the more power you have to change and prepare for the long-term future, which will make the world feel more stable as you enter the real world.
Acorns
The secret to being a real adult? It’s having an investment portfolio. Acorns is a program that makes it incredibly easy—the company rounds up your purchases to the nearest dollar, and invests that money in stocks, which grow in value over time. If I buy a cup of coffee for $3.50, I actually end up paying $4.00, because Acorns invests the $.50. By making the money disappear incrementally, you can trick yourself into saving up for a vacation, putting money away for an emergency fund, whatever you need to make yourself feel like you’re on top of things.
SleepyTi.me
Have you ever slept until 9:00 a.m. and felt groggy, but woken up at 3:45 a.m. and felt perfectly energized and ready to go? Those are your sleep cycles at work. SleepyTi.me takes the knowledge of sleep cycles (the average is about 1.5 hours), and calculates them into times where you should fall asleep or wake up in order to make getting out of bed and starting your day the easiest. Starting your day feeling wide awake will not only get you out the door faster in the morning, but will also improve your mood for the rest of the day. Besides, we all know that real adults are always well-rested.
Myfridgefood
Imagine this: You come home from a long day of classes and you’re starving. You open the freezer to see that you’ve run out of frozen dinners, so you open the fridge. You have some eggs, some bread, half an avocado, a nectarine, and some milk. You’ve got some oats and some salt in the pantry. What do you do with that?
Here’s where myfridgefood comes in: On the homepage, you punch in the ingredients that you have on-hand, and the website spits out results that you can make without having to run to the grocery store. The website saves you money, lets you put off that trip to Trader Joe's, and who knows? You may pick up some new cooking skills along the way.
theSkimm
Last but not least, we come to theSkimm. As all real adults know, the best way to be an adult is to know more about current events than all the other adults in the room. TheSkimm helps you to accomplish just that. Monday through Thursday, the program sends out a newsletter to your email with a quick summary of important international and domestic news. You’ll stay up-to-date on conflicts in the Middle East, the latest in the 2016 presidential election, and whether or not your favorite TV shows are coming back to Netflix. Never be unsure about what people are talking about again, and wow all of your friends with your new knowledge each day.
So there you have it: some great starting points to help you feel as though your life is on track. If you can save some cash, be more productive, cook a meal, get some sleep, and read an email, you’re ready for the world. Take these resources, use them, and may the twists that life throws never knock you off course.
