How To Combine Study, Work & Personal Life – The Best Life Hacks

Many students interested in developing their careers are increasingly starting to work during their studies and forget about their personal lives. Of course, this is the right decision since it is essential to gain valuable professional experience in the future. However, to successfully balance work, study, and personal life, you need to develop the skills of organizing your time. We have prepared the best life hacks to make your life easier.

Designate Borders

The first and most obvious tip is to balance your professional, academic, and personal life. If you do not know where these boundaries are, you can draw the line using rituals. Julianne Miles, the co-founder of Women Returners, advises that when you come home, immediately change from work clothes.

If you work from home, it is better to allocate a particular work area – when you move from your desk to your favorite sofa, you will immediately understand that it is time to rest. Find something that helps you switch from one mode to another. It could be a book you read on the subway, a short walk around with your dog when you are not thinking about business.

Almost everyone has situations when they need to do a student assignment at home, but you can draw boundaries in this case. Choose when you are not doing your homework and keep a precise schedule, such as late at night. It won’t be easy at first, but a steady regime and rules will help.

Choose a Convenient Job

Remote work is the most convenient format of work. Such professions as a translator, tutor, designer, programmer, copywriter are well suited for remote mode. Working from home is attractive because it does not require time and money to travel. In addition, freelancers say they find it easier to focus and get things done at home than in noisy office environments. Thus, you will be able to distribute your schedule:

• In the morning, you study.
• In the afternoon, you work on projects.
• In the evening, you relax with your family or loved ones.

Arrange Prioritize

The first step is to determine what matters to you to keep your work from interfering with your personal life or study. Be honest with yourself: everyone has different goals and priorities, so don’t be guided by the expectations of your parents or those around you. Try to build your schedule by what is important to you: the ability to pick up children from school on your own or receive additional education in the evening, go to the doctor’s office in the afternoon, or go to the pool in the morning. Employers value smart, capable employees and are often willing to make concessions. Your task is not to be afraid of open conversation and to arrange work according to your needs.

Learn to Deny

Only you know the limits of your capabilities. If you realize that the job is beyond your capacity, tell your employer directly. Don’t be afraid to postpone work or tell your boss that he has given you too many tasks. A heavy workload can lead to poor performance, and you would be better off preventing this situation in advance.

It will be easier to distinguish between work, personal life, and study if you learn to say “no” to additional tasks for which you do not have the energy and time. Coach Melanie Allen advises not to agree to requests to do something beyond the norm immediately but to take a short pause, think, and spend time on a more critical educational task.

Sleep At Least 7 Hours

Constant sleep deprivation is the first cause of fatigue, low mood, and low efficiency. Therefore, you need to try to sleep for as many hours as you need to recuperate fully. On average, this is seven and a half hours, but for everyone, this rate is individual. You need to know your sleep rate and try to adhere to it. It may also turn out that the reason for fatigue is not at all a large amount of work, but the fact that you constantly do not get enough sleep. By the way, you need to remember that sleep time is a constant value, and you should not decrease it to allocate time for something else.

Use Professional Help

If your work schedule is too busy, you can use the help of professional writers and arrange custom papers. By entrusting the completion of your assignment to other experts, you will not worsen your academic progress and optimize the time spent.

Maintain Connections With Classmates

Friendship with classmates will help you stay on top of the active student life. There are tons of ways to make friends online now. For example, you can create a group in the messenger where you can exchange academic news, information about current submissions, helpful information about studies, screenshots of notes, ask each other for advice, etc.

Stop Checking Messages

Smartphones help us stay connected 24/7. In the case of a family, gadgets make communication easier. However, in the case of work, devices can get in the way. For example, we continue to solve working moments even outside the office. E-mail and instant messengers can distract and take away free time. When you want to chat with a friend, you involuntarily start reading messages from work chats. Yes, a work letter can arrive early in the morning or at 1 am, but you must adhere to time limits.

For example, after a working day, you can turn off notifications from mail or messengers. You can also set the night mode to devote time to study or family. On weekends, you can set up an auto-answer so that the interlocutors know when to expect an answer from you. People do not always need to get information urgently. Sometimes employees want to know that you have received a message and will respond to it later. Of course, there are exceptions when it is impossible to answer a call or message. However, keep in mind that work should not merge into your personal life.

Find Motivation

Sometimes it can be challenging to get started on an assignment, especially when it is difficult or a subject you hate. But, unfortunately, we also have to deal with such matters. If you understand that you cannot avoid this work, it is worth finding the motivation to complete the task.

Any items, ideas, people, and characters that are of value to you will come in handy. Hang up a Sheldon Cooper poster that won’t approve if you don’t do your physics homework, or tell yourself that for every math exercise you solve, you’ll get a prize.

You can also find motivation at a higher level. Think about why you need to study: you will not build a successful career without graduating from college or university.

Go in for Sports

Someone will object, how to find time for sports if it is hardly enough for a family? But physical activity helps a lot relieve fatigue and mental stress and distract from problems. You don’t have to go to fitness or exhaust yourself with workouts. A morning jog or gymnastics, two visits a week to the pool or dancing, with your family or loved ones will be enough for you.

Don’t Push Yourself

Perfectionism hurts self-development. Over the years, we have more and more additional tasks or responsibilities, and it becomes more challenging to do them perfectly. It is helpful to let go of the situation sometimes and be prepared to sacrifice something. If you don’t have the energy to cook a complicated dinner after work, do not beat yourself up that you have to limit yourself to pizza: this way, you will save yourself from burnout. And in work, and personal, and student affairs, you do not need to strive to do everything impeccably – it is enough to try to perform your duties well.