Reply to thread

[USER=138]@Jai C.[/USER] I swear I thought you tagged me in this thread?

It is really tough to juggle multiple commitments. I’m still trying to keep it all together while doing the LPC, but a few things I find help with time management (apologies if this is a bit rambling as I’ve just typed this all out on my commute home):

• Get enough sleep! I can’t function efficiently without 7 hours of sleep. I can definitely drag myself through a day on 4-5 hours of sleep but I find I lose focus and stamina faster than if I were well-rested. So allocating time for rest comes at the very top of my priorities, and the rest is built around that.
• Figure out which tasks you can multi-task. For example to keep up with the news, I tend to listen to FT podcasts and/or read news while getting ready in the morning or commuting.
• Sort tasks in order of difficulty. So for study-related stuff, I tend to allocate working on more difficult aspects of tutorial prep for the first half of the day when my energy and focus is high. More menial tasks like reading lectures or articles I tend to do in the evening as it doesn’t need that much focus.
• Break tasks up into smaller tasks. I mentioned on another thread some time ago that I used to split writing applications into two parts - researching and writing. When I was working full-time I would spend weekday evenings (and whatever spare time I could glean) just researching firms that I had planned and decided to apply to. I kept a word document of my research (usually just copy pasting stuff from grad brochures, articles etc) and on weekends I would spend time actually writing the applications. Having done the research beforehand made it easier and more efficient to write the applications in one go on the weekend.
• Set firm priorities. It’s exam season for me now, which means I’ve had to have a good hard look at how I spend my time in a day and decide what I’m willing to sacrifice in order to put in more exam prep. Personally that means I’ve cut down on gym the past few weeks, and also set restrictions on how much I access social media. The screen time feature on iPhones is super helpful for this actually - you can see how many hours you spend on social media and (I’m a bit sheepish admitting this) if you cut out 30-60 minutes a day of screen time, that’s 4-7 extra hours in a week to do other things.
• Keep a calendar or diary. I spend ten minutes every weekend planning the week ahead and in exam periods I plan my study days at the end of every day based on how much I got done that day. It helps relieve stress actually knowing that you’ve planned out how to manage and achieve the million-and-one things you have to do, and can just focus on what to do for that day.
• Finally - be kind to yourself! Sometimes you will not meet your daily goals or some days you may be just burnt out. When that happens don’t beat yourself up - take an hour to unwind, have a walk, whatever - and just continue doing your best moving forward. You can’t change what has happened but you’re always in control of what you choose to do next.

I hope this helps. All the very best!