Welcome to this blog on a definitive guide on how to balance life, work, & school.
At the time I’m reading this, I’m two weeks into my first year of high school. After almost two years of virtual school, going back in person is a whole different experience.
At home, I found it much easier to manage my time, as I didn’t have to drive to and back from school. Online, I would be done with school around 12 and now, I’m done with all my classes at 3:30.
With a whole change in my schedule and life, I thought it would be helpful (not just for you, but also for me) to write a blog on how to balance life, work, and school.
With high school, Teen Financial Freedom, being part of the tennis team, and more, my #1 priority right now is keeping a balance between all aspects of my life.
I’m sure many of you have other extracurriculars or activities that you are involved in outside of school. With all these activities, it’s super vital that we are able to manage each aspect well and give ourselves enough time to dedicate and focus on each of them.
Not keeping a balance with all these aspects has a serious impact on us. We’ll be more stressed, mess up our routines, and more. This only leads to a decline in our performance in school and work.
Even though I’m only 2 weeks into high school, I would say I’ve been maintaining a good balance between school, life, and work. I’ve started waking up @6:30 am on the weekdays and sleeping by 10. Another thing that has helped me is knowing what to work on each day. School is my main focus, so on the weekdays, I dedicate it to school. Fridays are a mix of school, work, and relaxing. On the weekends, I work on TFF, like how I’m writing this blog on a Sunday, today.
It may be hard, but it is never impossible to create the perfect balance between life, school, and work. It may take some experimentation and time to see what works best for you, but it can be done with the right mindset. With that, here are 10 tips on how to balance life, work, and school so you can be successful in all areas!
1. Manage your time wisely
Every minute counts. Do you usually sleep in on the weekend? Give up that luxury and use the time for classes. Enjoy binge-watching the latest new series on Netflix? Do a half binge instead; the show will still be there next week. Spend some of that time getting coursework done. Remember the goal you’re working toward—a promising future and greater opportunity. Once you’ve attained your goal, you will be able to take more time for other activities.
https://www.purdueglobal.edu/blog/student-life/work-life-balance-guide-college-students/
Check out Jacob’s blog on time management for teens in 2021 for more information and direction!
It also helps to schedule time for what you want to do. For example, you could set 30 minutes off in the morning to work out or journal.
2. Set priorities
A really helpful tip to balance life, school, and work is to set priorities. If you think you have too much going on, it’s okay to step down in some of your positions or take up less work. Balancing these aspects of your life is not possible without prioritizing them. In my other organization, I had to leave some roles because I knew I needed to dedicate that time to school.
When you know what your priorities are, you can get started on your work without any confusion. This will help you get work done faster and accomplish your goals!
Be sure to read my blog on how to set priorities effectively in 2021!
3. Maintain a healthy lifestyle
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is critical to being able to balance school, life, and work. There are many people who have no set sleep routines and don’t take care of themselves physically, and end up lacking in their school work and not being able to keep up.
We always hear about the benefits of sleep, but how many of us actually try to improve our sleep quality?
You may think that getting enough hours of sleep is impossible considering the amount of work you have to do, but think about it: you won’t have the energy to complete your work if you don’t get proper sleep.
With quality sleep, healthy food, and exercising often, you’ll be able to have more energy, think clearly, and do work with 100% effort!
4. Be present
I’m not going to lie – when school was online and classes were on Zoom, sometimes I would go outside and do something else, missing the lesson. I’m sure many of you can relate.
However, that only led to having to spend more time reviewing the concept and spending more mental energy trying to understand it.
To maintain a balance between school, life, and work, be present with whatever you are doing.
- If you are working on homework or in school, make an effort to focus on just that. Try not to think about your business or spending time with friends.
- If you are working on your business/job, put your full focus on that. Don’t let anything else distract you.
- If you are taking the time to focus on yourself and relax, don’t think about school or work. You come first.
5. Stay organized
Organization is a major factor in being able to balance work, school, and life. When you’re organized and have everything in order, things won’t get mixed up and you’ll be able to know which tasks belong to which aspect of your life.
By organization, I am referring to physical, digital, and mental.
Physical Organization: When you have stacks and stacks of random papers lying on your desk, how are you going to focus? If your drawer is full of things you just threw in there, how are you going to find what you need? When your own environment is disorganized, you’ll ultimately be wasting a lot of time trying to find the things you need.
Digital Organization: I find that when I have several tabs on my laptop, I get distracted by them and keep clicking on them when I’m trying to work. I also find it super frustrating when I’m trying to find a document on my drive but it somehow got lost. Digital organization is vital as well because nowadays, most of our work is done online and if our computers are disorganized, so do we become disorganized.
Mental Organization: If your mind is all over the place, you won’t be able to focus on the tasks you have to do. It helps to focus on one thing at a time and not multi-task. Mindfulness is a great way to organize and declutter your mind.
6. Ask for help
To help stay organized, I highly recommend checking out this weekly and monthly organizer to organize your daily life!
There is never any shame in asking for help. Never.
Whether you need help in any of your subjects, direction for your job/business, or support in life, just go for it.
Your teachers only want to see you succeed and do well. Your friends and family are always there for you when you need them.
The sooner you ask for help in whatever you need, the better your life will be.
Remember, asking for help is not a sign of weakness – it’s a sign of strength because you have the courage to admit that you don’t know everything, and the willingness to learn and grow as a student, intern/coworker/businessperson, and as a human.
7. Learn to say “no”
When you’re busy with your life and your goals, that’s what you need to focus on.
People may ask you to do favors for them and join something or whatever else, but remember what your priorities are.
Don’t get me wrong — it’s not a bad thing to help others, but if you can’t handle the pressure of yet another task you have to do, it’s only going to increase your stress.
It’s not only important to say no to some requests, but also important to say no to things that won’t help you, like going to a party instead of working on your goals and watching Netflix instead of getting homework done.
By all means, if you think that something is going to benefit you, go ahead and say yes. However, it is something that is only going to increase your workload, cause you more stress, or distract you from your aspirations, the answer should be “no.”
8. Set realistic goals
When you are starting to balance your life, work, and school, it may be addicting to set overly ambitious goals. While that’s not a horrible thing, it may only lead to discouragement when you think that the goal is too far. This is why it’s important to set realistic goals. Break down that 1 ambitious goal into 3 or more realistic goals. This will lower your stress, motivate you to continue, and make you feel good and proud about yourself! So, what are you waiting for? What are your realistic goals?
9. Work ahead & don’t procrastinate
By procrastinating you are allowing your to-do list to grow and grow into an intimidating amount of work. Once all that work has piled up, it will be even harder to motivate yourself to get started. Getting ahead on readings, papers, and other assignments will help reduce procrastination-based stress while allowing more time in the future for hanging out with friends or just relaxing with a weekend of Netflix binging. Resources like Course Hero—which offers study resources, online tutoring, and digital flashcards—can help you study ahead and compare notes to past students who’ve taken your exact courses before.
https://www.wayup.com/guide/community/5-ways-to-maintain-balance-between-work-school-and-life/
10. Make time for yourself
Last but not least, it is important for you to make time for yourself, regardless of how busy you are. Your mental health should be your top priority, so never forget that.
This could mean spending time with friends or family, or taking a moment to just relax.
Often times we get so caught up with school and work that we forget about ourselves. We forget about taking care of ourselves and ensuring that we are showing up as the best version of ourselves.
Taking time to be one with yourself and set aside everything else is significant to your wellbeing.
When you finish all your homework/work, reward yourself for the hard work you put in. Treat yourself with whatever you want, whether this means 30 minutes of watching Netflix, eating chocolate, or whatever you like. 🙂
The Takeaway:
As a recap, the 10 tips to help balance life, work, and school are to:
- Manage your time wisely
- Set priorities
- Maintain a healthy lifestyle
- Be present
- Stay organized
- . Ask for help
- Learn to say “no”
- Set realistic goals
- Work ahead & don’t procrastinate
- Make time for yourself
Along with these tips, I also highly recommend watching this video, “The Secret to Balancing Good Grades, A Social Life & Job Whilst At University/ College (MUST WATCH!)”
Whether you’re in middle school, high school, or college, I hope you were able to learn something from this blog post and start to implement these tips in your life. All of us are human, so it’s not possible to always be perfect and right every single day/time. There will be times when we feel like giving up because we have too much to do, but those are moments when we allow our strengths to shine through and show ourselves who we are.
I hope that by following these tips, you’re able to build your resilience in life and succeed in not just school, not just work, but most importantly, life – building ourselves, taking care of ourselves, accomplishing our goals, and have fun at the same time.
Yes, school will get hard. Yes, work will be stressful. And yes, life may become difficult. But remember, the hard times are temporary. The hours of studying for quizzes and tests will soon turn into an abundance of knowledge for you to always keep for the rest of your life. The tasks you get done in your job/business serve as a base for the journey of your career. Lastly, The moments you go through the hardships in life are the moments you become stronger and more resilient.
With that, have a great day and go after your priorities!
Thanks for reading and if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, type down below!
