Whether you’re looking at college or med school tuition, education in the US does not come cheap. If you’re a student who needs to work while completing your education, this guide will teach you how to balance both at the same time.
1 | Communicate with Your Workplace
The first step is communication. Be open and honest with your workplace, including your boss and colleagues, about your school commitments so that they can help you where they can.
This is something you may initially want to avoid for fear of losing your job, but this step is essential. If you need time off for a specific exam or group project, you need to know that your workplace will be accommodating.
Keep in mind, however, that this is a two-way street. When it’s in your power to help someone out at work, such as covering another shift, go out of your way to do so. Your colleagues will be more likely to return the favor the next time you have an upcoming exam if you’ve helped them before.
If you’re in a situation where your work isn’t understanding of your school schedule and commitments, look for other employment options. If you’re in this boat, reach out to other students, family, professors, and mentors about job opportunities that may be more accommodating of your school schedule.
2 | Get the Most Out of Every Study Session
Second, the less time you have, the more valuable it is, so it is vital that you get the most out of every study session. This means you have no time for passive studying techniques like rereading your notes or rewatching lectures. You must utilize active study techniques.
Combining spaced repetition with active recall is the most effective way to comprehend and memorize information.
For active recall, focus on practice problems and creating flashcards. This way, instead of memorizing one isolated piece of information, you’re thinking in multiple layers, requiring additional concepts that each build upon the other. This kind of higher-order thinking is much more efficient and effective than the way you learned to study in high school.
Spaced repetition means increasing the intervals between exposing yourself to the same information. Your memory becomes more resilient if you review information just before you’re about to forget it. This form of memorization helps you consolidate information to your long term memory in the least amount of time.
Cramming, on the other hand, is extremely ineffective. Trying to learn everything in the 12 hours before a test is far less fruitful than spreading 12 hours of studying out over the week leading up to your test.
The thing is, many students don’t stick with active study techniques because passive techniques feel fast and easy. But if studying is easy, it means it’s not effective, which ultimately wastes much more time—time you can’t afford to lose.
While active study techniques are more challenging at first, they give you a far greater bang for your buck.
3 | Utilize Your Commute
Third, use your commute for extra study time. Between going back and forth to school and going back and forth to work, plenty of your time will be eaten in transit. However, you can design this time productively.
Avoid driving if you can because it’s difficult to get anything else done while needing to concentrate on the road. It’s also one of the more expensive modes of transportation.
Instead of staring out the window and listening to music, watching videos on TikTok, or playing Candy Crush, utilize your commute, whether on the bus or subway, to get in extra study time.
Biking is another great option. While you won’t be able to study during this time, you’ll be getting in exercise on a daily basis, which will help you sleep at night and help you focus when it comes time to study. Exercising on your commute kills two birds with one stone since you need to exercise at some point to keep a healthy body and mind.
When we get busy, exercise is often the first thing we cut, even though we know how important its long-term benefits are to our overall health, wellbeing, and longevity. However, exercise also has many short-term benefits, such as improving cognitive function, decreasing stress, and enhancing your ability to study effectively.
4 | Optimize Meals
Next, you can gain extra time for studying by optimizing your meals. Between cooking, eating, and doing the dishes, feeding ourselves takes up an incredible amount of time.
That’s why it’s best to batch meal prep and eat simply throughout the week. Save extravagant meals for the weekend or your day off, and only if cooking is something you enjoy. If you live with your roommate or partner and often eat together, batching meal prep also means you won’t waste any time deciding what you want to eat—something that can drag on way longer than it needs to.
If you can eat a reasonably priced and healthy meal at school or work, opt for what’s quick rather than spending extra time at home preparing meals.
If you have family members who enjoy cooking, ask them if they can help you out with some home cooked meals now and then to save you time. Depending on your family, you may have people in your life who are incredibly supportive of your scholastic pursuits and would be more than willing to help cook you some meals.
Learn more: How to Save Time While Eating Healthy Meals.
5 | Perfect Your Sleep
Fifth, you must optimize your sleep habits. Again, you have no room for wasted time. You can’t afford to have a sleepless night or even multiple days of poor quality sleep.
Optimizing my sleep has been something I’ve been obsessed with for years now, and I’ve spoken about sleep in detail many times. So I’ll only share a few quick insights here.
Start by developing a consistent morning and night routine, and aim to go to bed at the same time each night. You can prepare your body for rest by avoiding stimulating activities as well as blue light exposure from your phone or television in the hour leading up to bed. Instead, keep the lights in your space dim and pick up a book.
You can also practice meditation and intentional breathing, which will activate your parasympathetic nervous system, making it easier for you to relax and, eventually, fall asleep. Cooling your body before bed also helps with the physiologic transition to sleep. So set the thermostat to cool your space in the hour leading up before bed, and set it to warm up slightly in the morning.
If your mind often spins with ideas or all the things you have to do, jot them down in a journal so that you can leave them on the page.
The most important thing is consistency. The more you build the habit, the more your body will recognize the signals that it’s time for sleep, such as dim lights and a colder temperature.
While balancing both school and work, your time becomes your most valuable commodity. Don’t waste it lying in bed awake or tossing and turning.
If you want to learn more, I cover a clear process for How to Wake Up Early & Not Be Miserable in another guide.
6 | Multitask Correctly
Next, it’s vital to multitask correctly. We’ve harped on this many times before, but there is a right and a wrong way to multitask.
Never pair studying with watching TV. Effective studying requires deep and uninterrupted focus. You wouldn’t watch TV while driving, as both are non-automatic tasks that require your complete attention. Pairing two non-automatic tasks simply doesn’t work. You won’t retain what you learn while being distracted, so this is a major waste of your limited time.
Always pair non-automatic tasks with automatic tasks that need to be completed anyway. For example, watch TV while folding laundry, phone your parents while cooking dinner, exercise and stretch while listening to an online lecture, and so on. Batching these tasks will free up more of your time for work, studying, and still finding room for downtime.
7 | Outsource When Possible
Lastly, outsource tasks where possible. Calculate the time you’ll spend on a task versus how much it costs carefully. What will outsourcing a task to someone else save you?
Admittedly, this is more relevant to older students who are making more than minimum wage, but some outsourcing may still be worthwhile to all students. For example, if it costs $15 to have your groceries delivered but it saves you 2 hours of time and energy, it’s worth it.
If you can share house cleaning costs with your roommates, it may only cost you $20 twice a month to have your house cleaned. This is worth the time you will save cleaning a couple hours a month. Plus, even if it costs a little more, it’s worth the peace of mind to ensure you always have a tidy space in which to work and rest.
Always think in terms of the cost of your own time. It is your most valuable resource when balancing a full-time job with school.
To continue honing effective, time-saving study strategies, check out our list of the 9 best study strategies ranked.
