Individuals seeking to continue their education after entering the workforce can enroll for online degrees. If you’re a worker, earning a diploma or degree can increase your qualifications and enable a career pivot.
However, even though you’re schooling online, juggling work and your academics can be overwhelming. Nevertheless, you can succeed at an online degree with a good work-study balance. Let’s consider some top strategies to help you.
1. Understanding your Priorities
It’s important to understand your priorities when combining work and study. This will help you set balanced goals and design schedules and systems that appropriately balance both activities.
Highlight the facts and let them guide your planning. For example, are you working to simply support your education, or are you studying to boost your career? If you answer yes to the former, you must prioritize your studies over work, since it’s just a means to an end. For the latter, both activities deserve the same priority level as they are complementary.
After identifying your priorities, set goals using the SMART goal framework to reflect them. SMART goals must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Set goals for work and study, scheduling appropriate and sufficient time for each according to priority.
When working and studying, master the Pareto principle to help you achieve more in less time. This principle emphasizes tackling the most critical tasks that yield the most significant results. Don’t forget to prioritize rest and a healthy lifestyle. While you’ll always have a full plate working and studying, schedule time for rest and exercise to recharge.
2. Adopting Time Management Strategies
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Time can be your greatest asset or enemy when combining work with study, depending on your time management strategy. Let’s explore some effective time management strategies to explore:
Try Scheduling
Make effective schedules that outline your work and study needs. Your schedule should prioritize tasks based on their importance and pending deadlines. You can make daily or weekly schedules. Use tracking tools like planners and calendars, physical or digital, to enforce your schedules. Your schedule should be flexible but rigid enough to ensure your follow-through on commitments.
Stay Productive Between Tasks
You can improve productivity by effectively utilizing time between tasks. This practice helps you manage your time and reduces your workload during work hours. For example, you can use breaks between classes or shifts to review notes and complete small tasks and assignments.
Establish Deadlines and Avoid Procrastination
Strengthen your goals with strict deadlines and observe the deadline for each task. Set personal deadlines for important goals and simple tasks and adhere to them. This will help you meet larger deadlines at school and work.
You can succeed at this when you effectively avoid procrastination. Avoid putting off tasks until the last minute; it only increases your anxiety and stress, reducing productivity. Instead, approach important tasks head-on and delegate lesser ones where possible to ensure timeliness.
3. Maintaining Flexibility and Adaptability
As you juggle work and school activities, abrupt changes will confront you daily. Thus, you must be flexible and adaptable to these changes to maintain balance. Stay positive and seek ways to make changes work. Anticipating changes and making contingency plans can help. You can also adopt a growth mindset and develop quick thinking to stay adaptable.
4. Leveraging Support Systems
You don’t have to go through the stressful process of working and schooling alone. Leverage support systems available to you. This can be your family, friends, or school or workmates who relate to your challenges. Simple encouragement from these people can help you immensely.
Institutions also provide support services through professional mental and emotional health counselors. These counselors can help you improve your self-management and professional life. Make the most of these resources to maintain your work-study balance.
Tips for Balancing Work and Online Studies
As a worker, if you want to get a good degree or diploma of business online, you must balance your work effectively with your studies. Here are eight tips to help you achieve success:
- Take a reasonable course load
- Explore blended degree programs
- Adapt to online learning
- Optimize your study times and environment
- Tell your employer about your study program
- Break larger projects into smaller tasks
- Utilize academic resources available to you
- Leverage technological resources to improve productivity
Endnote
As a working student, you combine two full-time jobs, even when you’re pursuing an online diploma or degree. However, you can succeed at both with the right balance. Simply understand your priorities, adopt time management strategies, stay flexible, and leverage support systems. These strategies will help you navigate work and study seamlessly.
