How to Get That Healthy College/Work Life Balance

Are you feeling immensely overwhelmed and stressed out due to long exams, strict professors, and papers, while attempting to work and earn money on the side for your bills? This is very common among most working students. A lot of college students simply don't have the means to take up college courses unless they also earn a living. This even holds true for online learning or education students.

Photo Credit

Whether you're working part-time or taking up college courses full time, or vice versa, the key is to balance your responsibilities by mastering certain time management techniques.

Create a Task Planner and Try to Stick to It

Lots of full-time college students are capable of balancing their time for work, school, and even personal time. The key is to figure out how exactly you can do all these effectively without succumbing to crippling stress. For starters, list down everything you need to do in a day and when.

Make sure to include specific details for each day to try and determine how you can best utilize and optimize your time. Include a per-hour schedule that should consist of your work and class hours, study hours, extracurricular activities, etc.

Make sure to include exercise and mealtimes, which are often overlooked when making a schedule. By writing down all your commitments, you will see right away if you are overloading your schedule. Sure, it is extremely vital to be organized and be a stickler for schedules.

However, if you simply don't have enough time to do what needs to be done when they need to be done, you have to learn how to prioritize.

How to Prioritize Tasks

Once you have created your schedule, it's now time to organize it by priority. You just need to rank each task and time spent on each according to priority or importance. For instance, if your grades for this month is a top priority, set aside time for papers and studying earlier for each day.

This is to avoid not doing it as the day goes by. Your main challenge when prioritizing tasks is to set which ones should come first. You can then decide on things that you need to cut back on, for a given period at least, until your priorities change.

Battling Stress for Effective Time Management

If you're stress about time management, you need to deal with your stressors first so that you can effectively manage your schedule. To do this, below are some easy strategies to consider:

Don't avoid "ME" time, family time, or time with your friends and roommates whenever possible. Even two to three hours a week of spending quality time with those who matter to you or doing something you love will help reduce your stress.

• Always squeeze some time in for some exercise, even if this means working out at home or walking to and from errands.
• Learn when to say "NO" when you know you can't fit a task to your schedule.
• Eat healthy, get ample sleep, and stay away from vices.

Yes, balancing work and studying is a massive challenge, but if lots of people are doing, there's reason you can't do it as well.