How to master your work, life, and study balance

 
Juggling everything in your life can be tough at times, especially when you add studying into the mix. So how can you manage everything successfully? Here are our top tips.

Is your current balance working?

The first thing you need to do is look at what you’re doing at the moment, and assess whether or not it’s working for you. Sometimes it’s not possible to change certain areas of your life – such as shift work, or childcare – but check your work/life balance with these steps:

1. Take a moment to question your situation. What’s currently causing you stress or unhappiness? Is it affecting your work life? Is it affecting your personal life? Are you prioritising something over something else? And by doing so, what are you missing out on? Taking some time to think about your priorities can help you choose what changes you need to make.
2. How are you feeling? Now you’ve asked the questions, how does this make you feel? Happy? Angry? Resentful? They’re all valid feelings and can help you decide your next steps.
3. What needs to change? Reprioritising things can really help the balance. Do you need to reduce the number of working hours so you can see your children more? Do you need to study more to pass the exams and therefore need to reduce the amount of time you spend on your hobbies? Can you miss a night out for a night in with the family? You need to work out what’s worth adjusting, and what’s worth prioritising.
4. Are there any alternatives? Could you change your study patterns, or work hours? What is actually do-able and what isn’t?
5. Change it up. If you think changing your work hours to better suit your studying, it might be worth asking to do it. Same if you think the change could help with family life. Make the changes and see if they work – you could always ask to change them temporarily to see if it helps. Or if you just need to get through the next few months of studying before your exams. It can’t hurt to ask.

Now you’ve worked out what is and isn’t working, you can start to concentrate on you, and what you need to do to move forward.

Make your learning just as important as your job

There’s a reason you’ve decided to study – be it to advance in the role you’re in, or move to a new career. So it’s important to make time for study. There will always be times when your work is busy, or there’s a deadline to hit, but you need to be strict with yourself when it comes to hitting the books.

If possible, block time out of your work diary dedicated to learning and development. Most workplaces allow you to train during work hours, so put yourself on “do not disturb” and get studying. Make it part of your weekly schedule to always give yourself time to do this. And set what you want to achieve in the time you’ve given yourself. Do you want to learn about a particular subject, or read up on a particular area of tax? Do it with intent, not just “oh I’ll study something during that time” – focus your time, it’s precious.

Step away and relax

Study, work, family, children – they all take up your time and it may feel impossible to take any time for yourself. But it’s essential that you do this to avoid burnout. You need to unwind. Don’t look at emails on your phone. Mute your chat notifications. Put your out of office on. And take some time to just relax and switch off. Some people can do this with a 10 minute meditation, some need a bit longer – but whatever works for you, do it. You’re not going to be working or studying at your best if your head is all over the place.

Technology for the win

When balancing work, study, family, social life – and everything else in between – technology is a miracle worker. Make use of good thorough planners, diaries, and workload priority software. You can use your phone to help split work and personal time – make use of the screen-time function, set all personal apps as ‘always allow’ and apply restrictions to work-based apps. You’ll quickly see the difference when you’re not being badgered by work notifications and feel the need to jump on them.

Talk and share your experiences with others

We often get so bogged down in our own lives and issues, that we forget others go through this stuff too. Talk to your colleagues, fellow learners, and friends about workloads, family priorities, study pressures – they might be going through the same things and give advice and support. You can find solutions together, and you never know, one person may need a break from looking after the kids at the exact moment you have the time to take them to the park – you won’t know if you don’t talk about it.

Study in the way that suits you best

If you’re busy with work and family life, you need a study method that’s flexible enough to work with you, not be a burden. You might consider distance learning as it’s something you can do whenever and wherever you are. For example, you can do it at work during your scheduled learning time, or after the kids have gone to bed. You don’t have to attend scheduled lessons, just be motivated enough to study by yourself – with support of course, you wouldn’t be going it entirely alone.

Thinking about adding studying to your work/life balance?

If you think that studying accountancy or bookkeeping is something you’d like to do, and feel it could fit in your schedule, have a look at our AAT, ACCA, and CIMA pages for more info. We also have a free 7 day trial so you can see if the course, and distance learning study method, works for you.