My craziest semester was when I was enrolled in 5 courses, freelancing, working part-time, and volunteering on a student group. On top of that, I decided to enroll in a part-time Brainstation course.
I was dancing with burn out. I didn’t realize it at the time — but looking back, it was too much to manage. I was just too busy to recognize the signs.
Having that much on your plate comes at a cost. Business was starting to slow and I was making rookie mistakes. I was stressed through midterms and I didn’t dedicate as much time or effort as I wanted into my Brainstation project. It made me realize that my schedule was past the limits of what I could healthily manage.
I needed to learn how to prioritize. How to embrace sacrifice.
Understand that it is mathematically impossible to put 110% into everything you do—especially when you’ve got a full plate. What was I willing to forgo?
Ask yourself:
“What are my long-term goals?”
“Will this commitment help me get there?”
Being a student means that every four months your schedule changes. It means that every year, you have the option to take on new extracurriculars. Every summer, you’re looking for new internships. Being a student means that you have a lot of opportunities to experiment. Check in with yourself at the beginning of every semester and whenever an opportunity comes your way— "What are my long-term goals and will this commitment help me get there?"
My friends joke that I cost-benefit analysis my entire life. It’s true.
I wanted to do it all. Innately I’m driven by output. I needed to redefine what success meant to me.
If I wanted to run my business it meant taking time away from studying which meant that I wasn’t going to be an “A” student anymore. Ultimately, this meant an academic Masters was going to be more difficult to pursue. I was okay with this. It didn’t fit into my long-term goals.
My long-term goal is to be a Product Designer. I found an internship to help me get there. I continued working part-time and the consistent pay allowed me to not stress about finances. Without the financial pressure to cover my expenses through freelancing—without needing the money, I was able to take on projects I actually wanted to do.
So my new schedule looked like: working part-time as a product design intern to advance my career, freelancing because it fulfilled me and allowed me to build my portfolio, and school.
So what about a social life? How often was I hanging out with my friends?
I definitely wasn’t happy-hour-ing every day. More so once a week or on the weekends. My weekends were no-schedule-work-zones. So if plans did come up last minute, sometimes I would push the task I had scheduled and make up for it on the weekends—in exchange for good company and enjoying my youth.
I’m a very forgetful person. If I don’t write it down, I’ll forget it. Everything goes into my Google Calendar.
At the beginning of every semester, I’ll go through my Google Calendar and time-block everything I can in advance. This might include school, work, regular necessary activities like eating and working out—just to have the hours accounted for. And to avoid overbooking myself to the point where I’ll neglect these needs.
I’ll count the hours of the remaining time I have between this which I’ll allocate for freelance work. This might range from 10-16 hours per week.
Then, being a visual person, I’ll colour code my calendar:
Figure out what your own limits are and work within those. Having my day planned out this way keeps me sane. If I plan it in advance then I don’t have to think about it later and I can just go about my day one task at a time without thinking of what comes after.
I love routine. It means that I have fewer decisions to make throughout the day. Meaning I can use that mental energy on more important things.
I try to schedule my classes, part-time work, and readings between the hours of 9-5. That way my evenings are consistently reserved for freelancing. I know that by 10PM work gets shut down and I need to start decompressing and getting ready for bed.
Virtual meetings are incredible. You save so much time not having to commute. Plus not having to mentally prepare yourself to move to a new setting. Try to always host the meeting on a phone call / Google Hangouts / Zoom, unless the client prefers or insists on face-to-face.
You do not have to be productive every single hour of every day to succeed. Find a balance of how much “me-time” you need, how much socializing you need, how much time you need to decompress at the end of every night. Prioritize that. Prioritize your health. Everybody is different.
Listen to your body. Be patient and know that it's normal to feel unmotivated some days. The excitement will come and you can ride that wave as long as it lasts. Let high-energy periods make up for the low ones.
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There’s no exact science to it. With all this planning, days still looked pretty messy. I would try to study with my friends, get distracted, and have to make up the time later. I’d get distracted in class and have to reteach myself the lesson in my evening working block. I’d get home from work/school and sit on my couch for two hours scrolling through social media, before transitioning into work mode. You figure out what works for a period of time, it stops working, and you adjust.