How to balance working?

Time and Task management are one of the most important skills to learn in life and skills you can refine as you go. One of the things that has helped me is understanding when your most engaged and what time of the day you will learn the most. I took a lot of morning classes as thats when Im most focused. At nights I would work a part time job where I worked 25 hours a week. How you decide to send the time in between is completely up to you. I would advise using a Google calendar and any free time you have writing what are the top three things you need to get done that day. I didn't have a heavy workload as far as home-work is concerned. More large term papers and midterm and finals exams. Choose a location that works best for you to study in, I didn't have too much success studying at the library and prefed to study at home.

-Find a place to study

-Find a time to study

And make it a habit to simplify your life.

Raj, great question and I'm currently in this situation. I have been working full time for the last 10 years and 5 years ago I began my bachelor degree. At first I found it hard as I took on to many courses, the following semester I adjusted and took two courses per semester, which I found a better work life/school balance. I would recommend starting with 1 or 2 courses and see if that is manageable. If the workload is easy, take an additional course. I look forward to your success and good luck

Raj's suggestion is a good one. Myself, I didn't even start college until I was already working. At first, I was taking a full load of classes while working full time. It was ok for a bit, but I started to get burned out. I couldn't really reduce the number of hours I worked, so I reduced the amount of classes I had at a time. It helped a lot. Yes, it makes the schooling take longer overall, but if that's what you need to do so stay sane and ensure you have some time to unwind, that's quite ok. I'm done now, and super glad I did it - it was worth the effort.

With balancing anything it is important to plan out and prioritize. I was given advice a long time ago to start planning out your week on Sundays. This gives you a roadmap to your week and can allow you to be flexible knowing what else it can disrupt.

It is not hard at all. I actually take online classes while working. I know what needs to get done so I plan accordingly.

It's all about scheduling! You have to make a plan if you plan to win. Plan out every minute of every day, including classes, work, studying, fun, and sleep. It may seem like overkill, but when you are tired and not sure what you should do next in your hectic day, you can refer to your previous made plan and know exactly what to do.

Depending on how many hours you’ll be working I would consider 8 week classes/4 hrs per week which allow you to do both without spending 12 hours a week in class.

Get a good planner and plan out your weeks with time dedicated to school and class work. And schedule yourself some downtime. You don’t want to get burnt out.

Brandi it's so amazing that you want to keep pursuing your education all the while working on your professional life as well. From personal experience I would suggest to think about what is a bigger priority for you. Mine was education so I planned my work around having the adecuate time to be successful in class. You're vision might be different and that's ok. There's schools that will accommodate for your work life if that's the case. Either way find what works for you and give what you're priority is 100%.

Great question Brandi! I think many of us are faced with the same task of balancing time and tasks. I recently completed a training on 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Author and Publisher Steven Covey. This training was immensely helpful and I highly recommend anyone serious about development as well as efficiency consider taking this course or at the very least read the book. As a small insight one of the parts of this training include time management broken down into 4 quadrants and brings awareness to which quadrants are the most effective use of your time. With this self awareness piece you are now empowered to get more done and you will find you have the time to do not only what you set out to accomplish but possibly even more!