ProductivityUniversity of British Columbia

How to Balance School, Extracurricular Activities, and Work

How to Balance School, Extracurricular Activities, and Work
Students in colleges and universities are becoming more well-rounded in contrast to the past. 

More and more people are trying to find balance between school, extracurricular activities, and even jobs so that they can prepare themselves for the job market after graduation, or just pay the bills while studying.

I am one of these students, and I’m sure that most of you are too. Besides working towards my engineering degree, I was fortunate to land an internship position at Wize this summer and continued working with reduced hours during the term. In addition, I have joined a few clubs focusing on projects related to software and entrepreneurship.

The following contains some of the insights I have about how to balance all of these different responsibilities. This is my story and my insights, but I think that there are other students just like me, and I hope that you might find this helpful.

Here are my top 3 tips for balancing school, extracurriculars, and work:
Know your priorities
Get the help you need
Use time management tools
1. Know Your Priorities
If you don’t know what is important to you or what your priorities are, there will be a chance that you will not be motivated to do anything to get the balance right.

For example, let’s say your grades aren’t what you want them to be on the midterm, so you need to work towards a better grade. Instead, you decided to focus on extracurricular activities. As a result, your grades didn’t improve at all on the next round of exams. In this case, it was a better choice to prioritize school rather than extracurriculars.

Of course, it is obviously better to focus on both, but that is not realistic. Your energy and time, like mine, are limited. When you are setting priorities, you need to consider tradeoffs. Don’t be greedy. Instead, be realistic and honest to yourself.

  

A month ago, I was a club executive spending 10 hours working on outreach. I was spending so much time working on extracurricular activities and the internship that I had to skip lectures and assignments. In the end, I had to quit the position despite wanting to continue working on it. The fact is: I don’t have the energy to carry on so many responsibilities.

Having a purpose is the most important thing to figure out the right priorities. Here’s what I did:
sat down in a quiet place free of distractions,
made a list of things I worry about or feel I should focus on,
thought about why I need to focus on each of them more, and
ranked my list them in order of importance.
Last but not least, having priorities isn’t enough. You need to set objectives for yourself that are specific and measurable — one that you can visualize in your head. Setting these objectives will give you the focus and motivation you need to achieve what you want. Also, keep a physical record of your goals and priorities so that you can always remind yourself of them.
2. Enlist the help of others
Working towards your goals is difficult. Oftentimes, you may forget or procrastinate while working on tasks. Having your friends or others who are working towards the same goal to help you keep track is helpful.

In my case, I had a few friends who are taking the same courses as me, so we created a to-do list on Notion to keep track of all the assignments we have and we would check up on each other to make sure we have all completed the work.

You can do something similar! Find a group of people (especially if they are working towards the same goal as you) you’re comfortable sharing your goals with. You can create a tracker shared among the group. Also, it would be best to reflect together periodically and make it a habit because humans are forgetful creatures.
3. Use time management tools
Time management tools are essential to help you stay organized and keep track of your tasks and deadlines. Personally, I recommend two types of tools: Calendar and To-do list. These two are sufficient for time management. Considering there are so many different apps out there, it is better to stay simple by only using a calendar and a to-do list.

I use a calendar to keep track of any events and deadlines and use a to-do list to record my daily tasks and my longer term goals/priorities (since the daily tasks are based on these goals/priorities).

For both to-do lists and calendars, I use Notion because it offers many features and has a visually appealing user interface.
  
Conclusion
Besides the 3 tips mentioned above, the most important thing is to have self-discipline. Right now, there are more and more distractions and ways to gain instant gratification. As a result, people are becoming busier but less productive.

Having self-discipline is important because you will increase the capacity of responsibilities you can take on and make you more productive. Learn to delay gratification, resist the urge to distract yourself rather than give into it, and build better habits.

I hope with this article, I can help you achieve more. Best of luck to you on your journey to becoming the master of your own time!

If you're curious to learn more about landing jobs and internships that you will then balance with your school life and extra curricular life, we have a number of really great reads on this topic:

Top Media Internships for Undergraduates
How to Get an Internship with No Experience
Everything you Need to Know Before Starting an Internship