If there were a way to make your life easier, would you do it?

Every New Year’s, more than half of the teenage population vows to keep up with schoolwork and commit to a more productive lifestyle with less procrastination. But by mid-January, nearly all of those resolutions have been broken.

If you’re already a procrastinator, it’s nearly impossible to change your ways, but a few simple digital tricks, tips, and hacks can help anyone fake it until they make it.

Are you struggling with math and annoyed with only odd answers being available in the textbook?

Find your textbook on slader.com and it will provide the answers and detailed explanations for all problems. Calcchat.com is also available for select pre-calculus, calculus, and trigonometry books, though it only has the odd problems.

Additionally, sites such as mathway.com and wolframalpha.com can be used to solve specific equations and problems.

Do you ever need to brush up on a topic, but the information is so dense it’s hard to process and comprehend? Although Wikipedia is frowned upon, it’s okay for quick refreshes. You can simplify Wikipedia even further by replacing the “en.” with “simple.” in the URL. Although it isn’t available for every page, it condenses information to key topics for a quick skim.

Do you ever remember a good quote from a book, but are unable to remember the specific page number? Never struggle doing those pesky book reports again! Instead of frantically searching for the specific page citation for the quote that you remember, type the quote into Google Books (books.google.com), and it will automatically go to the page where the quote can be found. Note that this only extends so far as the range of Google Books, so local authors or those with smaller publishers may not always be available.

Most of the time, errors in essays can be avoided just by proofreading. However, if you’ve been working on the same paper for hours, it can be hard to view it with fresh eyes. Next time, consider pasting your entire report into Google Translate and have it read to you. Furthermore, if you need to read a web page but dislike reading from screens, you can listen to the page by highlighting the words, right clicking, and selecting “speech.” The downside to this is that automated voices, such as Siri, can sometimes be irritating or counterproductive.

When you’re researching, a large chunk of time is devoted to actually finding results. Try searching through scholar.google.com to get more reliable academic resources. If that doesn’t suit your fancy, two Smart Google Search tips are listed below to help refine your Google search.

“Google:” you can force Google to include specific phrases in the search results by placing quotation marks (“”) around the phrases you want included.

-Google: You can force Google to exclude specific words or phrases in the search results by placing a hyphen (-) before the term.

A final piece of advice is to apply the Two Minute Rule. If anything can be done in two minutes, do it right away and don’t put it off.

If you found any of this useful, let the Demon Tattler know, and share some hacks you use. Good luck keeping that New Year’s resolution to become more productive!