Hello, everyone! Co-founder Kenzie here on the blog this week. We hope you enjoyed last week’s blog post about job hunting tips and tricks. This week I want to talk about balancing everything after you’ve landed the job. Course loads at school, friends, family, significant others, pets, and job responsibilities, not to mention taking care of and prioritizing yourself! This can all become a lot to handle, especially when you’re trying to juggle all of these things at once. But don’t stress out too fast, we’re going to talk about some tips and tricks for balancing work, school, and life while also taking care of yourself.
Manage Your Time Learning how to manage your time and do it well is essential to be successful in school and work careers. When trying to balance school, work, and a family and social life, time management becomes even more essential, so that each aspect is given an adequate amount of time in your schedule. These tips can help you better manage your time when you have all of these things on your plate: Plan Your Schedule When you have this much to do, it’s essential that you plan out all of your activities, from the week down to the day. Include on your calendar your hours scheduled at work, the time you plan to spend with family or friends, and the time you plan to take for yourself. That way you can visualize where everything fits into place and be less likely to get sidetracked or behind in your responsibilities. Make To-Do Lists Did you know you’re more likely to do something when you write it down? It’s true. Seeing it on paper in front of you will make you want to complete that task so that you can cross it off your list. Personally, I live by to-do lists, and I’ll always swear that they work. Keep a calendar, but also make a to-do list for your week, and another one for your day if you need to! By the end of the week or day, when all the tasks are crossed off, you’ll know that you’ve completed everything you needed to on time. Stay Organized With this much to do, if you become disorganized you’ll start to lose track of your responsibilities and get behind. Set aside time once a day, I like to do it before I go to bed, to go around and pick up and put away anything out of place. Not only will this allow you to get a better night’s sleep knowing your space is clutter-free, but it’ll also allow you to know that everything is in its place when you get back to work the next day. Prioritize This is key! It can be tempting to do the easier, or faster tasks first. But don’t let this temptation win. Always prioritize your to-do lists and responsibilities by time restrictions and then by importance. If you have something due in six hours, you should be doing this before focusing on something that’s due next week. However, this tip also applies to balancing work and school with life. Prioritize yourself, your health, and your personal relationships. I learned this the hard way. It can be tempting to ignore phone calls from loved ones when you’re in a time crunch for deadlines. But like me, you’ll come to realize that taking a few minutes away from the task you’re working on to talk to that loved one is something you shouldn’t take for granted. You have to make time for what’s important to you. If it’s important enough, you’ll make it happen. Block Out Time for Yourself Prioritize your tasks, deadlines, to-do lists, and loved ones, but never forget to also prioritize yourself! Mark out time in your schedule just for you, take a bath, go on a walk, read, do your hair and make-up, whatever it may be that makes you feel good. Take the time to do it. If you wrap yourself up in work, school, and all of life’s responsibilities too much, without taking time for yourself, you’ll find yourself becoming burned out and overstressed, which is a recipe for disaster when trying to balance everything. Learn to Recognize When You’re Stressed With school, work, and life to deal with, it’s easy to get stressed at times. However, it’s important to know when you cross the line between a little bit of stress and stress overload. Stress overload is stress in excessive amounts and types that cause a person to respond in a way that contributes to the development of other problems. Signs of stress overload can include:
Once these symptoms set in, it can be difficult to navigate your way out of this excessive stress, but it isn’t impossible. As someone who has experienced all of these symptoms before myself, it’s never too late to realize that you need to readjust your schedule and priorities to bring your mental and physical health back together. Noticing and understanding that you’re over-stressed is the first step in the right direction. Once you’ve recognized stress, try some of the following tips to de-stress: Exercise You can go to the gym, work out from home, take a walk around the neighborhood, or anything that will get your body moving. Once you start moving you’ll release tension in your muscles, distract your mind from negative or overwhelming thoughts, and work off any anxious energy you might be carrying. Find Other Ways to Relax If exercising isn’t your thing, meditation, yoga, reading, drinking tea, playing with a pet, or even taking a short nap are all examples of healthy ways to relax your body and ease your nerves. Whatever works for you, finding what will allow your body to relax and your mind to wind down will help you reduce stress and be more successful in handling your daily tasks. Get Outside Have you ever noticed that you tend to feel relaxed when standing in the sunshine? It’s because most of us seriously lacking in vitamin D, a key vitamin in brain and body function. Take a walk outside, go sit on the porch or balcony for a while, visit a local park, anything you can do to soak up just a little bit of vitamin D can help reduce both physical and mental signs of stress. Talk to a Friend or a Loved-One Most of us have one person we love to vent or rant to. I can think of mine right off the top of my head. . .(aka, my Mom). Sometimes you have to talk it out when you’re under stress, especially if you’re starting to see symptoms like the ones listed above. Reach out to those who love and support you, talk about what’s going on, or talk about something entirely different and get your mind off the stress. Either way, talking to someone who will listen and support you can help reduce stress by reminding you that you’re not alone and that your work isn’t going unnoticed. Remember not to forget about your health (physical and mental) in the middle of balancing work, life, and school. Eat well, exercise, or at least get your body moving, and get enough sleep! The state of your physical and mental well-being can have a drastic effect on your school and work performance, so make sure to prioritize your body and mind on your list of responsibilities. Manage Conflicts You’ve found a way to manage your time, made a schedule, prioritized things to do, learned to recognize if you’re becoming too stressed. Now, how do you maintain this balance? How do you manage work, life, and school when these three things begin to overlap or become overwhelming? Maintain a balance between these three aspects and keep yourself sane by: Staying in the Moment You can’t enjoy any of the things you’re doing if you’re constantly worried about the things you’re not doing. When you’re at school and work, don’t let personal business get in the way. When out with friends and loved ones, don’t be worrying about your assignments on your desk at home. Live in the moment, focus on the present, and create memories where you are, or else you’ll find yourself resenting the feeling of lost time. Remember That You’re Human At the end of the day, we are all only human. We make mistakes, we fail some tests, we miss deadlines, we forget plans and birthdays. It happens, but you can’t beat yourself when it does. As a human, you also have to remember that sometimes you simply need a break. We’re not meant to be productive 24/7 and sometimes this means allowing yourself to take a step back and recharge. Avoiding Perfectionism This ties into the point that we’re all human, we make mistakes and don’t succeed all of the time. That’s okay! Holding yourself to impossible standards will never work out in your favor, so learn to be graceful with yourself. You don’t have to make an A on every assignment, you don’t have to make your boss think you’re super-human, and your family will understand if you can’t always take care of every need and favor they have. Be reasonable with your expectations for yourself, and set standards that allow you to be successful. Learning to Say “No” This is a hard tip, one that I’ve struggled with for years (and still do). No one ever wants to disappoint anyone, whether it be professors at school, bosses or coworkers, family or friends. But without creating boundaries and limitations, you’ll become overwhelmed and overstressed sooner rather than later. So, it’s okay to say no to that extra work assignment, you don’t always have to get those bonus points for class, and skipping one outing with friends or family to rest won’t make anyone hate you. Say no when you need to! Knowing When to Ask for Help Finally, the most important tip of them all. Everyone needs to learn when to ask for help and also learn that asking for help is okay! We all struggle at one point or another, and asking for and accepting help is perfectly normal. There are places to find help in all aspects of life. Tutoring at school, extra training and bosses at work, friends and loved ones to help with life, or even therapists for all of the above. Reaching out, no matter what kind of help you need, can help you be successful in the long run. School, work, and life by themselves can be difficult, but these three things together can be overwhelming. However, these years should be some of the best of your life, so it’s important to learn how to balance work and responsibility with fun and adventures. Finding this balance takes planning and work in itself, but once you get there you’ll be happy and successful at school, at work, and in life. For more college and life advice follow us @ShesSpeakingBlog on Instagram and Pinterest. Comment what other work/life balance tricks you have in the form below!
5 Comments
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May 2021
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