Working a full-time job can be very demanding. Attending college can be a lot of responsibility.
Raising a homeschooled family can take everything that you have to give.
Doing all three at the same time — and during a pandemic, no less — is absolutely overwhelming.
If you’re among the ranks of employed parents who are also attending school this fall, it’s understandable if you feel like you’re under a ton of pressure. While you can’t merely lay aside your familial, academic, or professional duties, there are a few things that you can do to ease the stress and help you do your best. You already juggle so many responsibilities at the same time.
Schedule Everything Together
Anyone who’s used to a work schedule, attending classes, or putting a toddler to bed knows that schedules matter. However, if you’re trying to balance the trifecta of family, school, and work, it’s essential you learn how to incorporate all three into a single schedule.
If you keep track of each one separately, you’ll quickly find that you’re double-booking events, over-filling your days, and continually trying to play catchup.
Instead, use a productive scheduling app, like Calendar or Doodle, to keep all of your plans in one convenient place. By doing this, your days will continue to run smoothly.
You’ll also be able to monitor how much time you’re spending on each task, and possibly even avoid (or at least reduce) the need to plunk your kid down in front of a screen for hours a day — typically 2 hours or less is ideal — as you won’t have to scramble to keep up with everything.
Organize and Designate Your Spaces
In addition to properly scheduling everything, it’s vital to thoroughly organize your home before classes start.
With COVID-19 still raging, chances are your work, school, your child’s school, or a combination of the three are currently remote. If all three are remote, then you can count on spending a lot of time attending meetings classes within the four walls of your home.
If this is the case, it’s important to organize and designate specific spaces within your home. For instance, bedrooms should remain devoted to sleep. Use common areas for family time and home offices or spare rooms as work and school stations.
If you can separate your spaces, it enables you to shift your mindset easily as you move from one task to another. It also provides an area for your children to do their school separate from the other areas of your home.
Setting up boundaries of this nature is critical to maintaining your sanity, particularly if you and your family are going to spend extended periods of time cooped up as you operate remotely from your house.
Establish Your Support System
A support system is critical to sustained success when you’re simultaneously working, attending school, and parenting. Now, before you throw up your hands in despair because you don’t have the support system that you envision, it’s important to clarify that a strong support system doesn’t always look the same.
If you’re fortunate, you may have the help of a live-in grandparent to take over with childcare while you’re at work. At other times you may have to manage on your own.
Even so, you may be able to find support options such as setting up your child on a Zoom playdate with a friend while you work. You may also be able to seek support from a program mentor at your school to help you stay focused.
Lack of support has always been one of the key struggles of adult learning. With that said, while you may not be able to create the support system you specifically want, it’s imperative to seek help when you need it.
Maintain Lists of Priorities
Finally, as you go along, there will come a time when you feel that you simply can’t fit everything into your schedule. When this happens, you may have to let something go — at least temporarily.
That’s why it’s helpful to have a list of priorities to help you execute wise decisions as you make sacrifices and allocate your time. For example, maintaining a social life has always been a point of emphasis for new college students. However, that doesn’t change the fact that school should clearly come before social interactions.
When you feel that your life is overcrowded, it’s important to be able to recognize what activities can be temporarily reduced and even cut out in order to relieve stress.
Sometimes, with a little innovation, you can even find an alternative. If you used to spend an hour every morning at the gym, you may be able to compensate for that lost time by staying fit and healthy at your desk. Get an exercise ball, go for walks, and stand while you work. This enables you to stay fit without sacrificing significant amounts of your precious time in the process.
other valuable tips:
Maintaining the Great Juggling Act of Life
Finding proper work-life balance is one of the primary steps that must be taken if you want to truly enjoy your work, school, and personal life. However, finding that balance takes focus and commitment.
Create a schedule, organize your spaces, establish your support systems, and order your priorities. If you can go into the school year with these in place and both eyes open, you’ll be able to juggle your legion of responsibilities without a single item falling to the floor in the process.
Image Credit: manage school work by pexels.com
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