
©Healthcare Daily Online
By the end of the last Fiji Emerging Leaders Course, all of the participants were either completing a course of study or enrolling into a course. Managing part-time study while working full-time and building a career, along with all the pressures of daily life (especially if you have a family) all adds up for an over-full life. Then things go south – you face challenges and tensions in your work life. It’s difficult to find margins. And who helps you know how to juggle these vastly different facets of life? All of this makes for accumulating executive stress points. It’s going to take some juggling skills.
How to juggle:
Keep your elbows at your hips and avoid moving your hands as much as possible. Otherwise, your tosses will be too all over the place to keep a juggling rhythm.
wikihow

©wikihow
How to juggle work, life and study? Just like juggling, keep things simple and rely on your rhythms and routines. Have a plan and plan well. Here’s five suggestions to maintain the work-life-study tension.
- Compartmentalize your life. Try to allocate time to study and time not to study. Study is a blend of needing to find time for deep uninterrupted work and other times when the work is mundane and a little ‘brainless’. Know yourself and when you study best. That’s the time for deep work. For myself, i know i am at my sharpest in the morning. That’s when i endeavoured to capitalize on study time. Afternoons are when i am weakest, so the mundane jobs that require minimal thinking get left for then. And make sure you find times in each week not to study – that will keep you fresh. Study is a long haul, so treat this like running a marathon and give yourself regular times to refresh. Cal Newport’s book ‘Deep Work’ is an excellent resource on understanding the productivity of finding when you are at your best and maximizing your time resource.

- Build your study network with others who are struggling along just like you. There may be others in your course who you can help find resources and research and discuss concepts to gain better understanding. Or there could be others who are studying different courses but you could meet to study together. Maybe as you look at Deep Work you’ll find tools that can help your fellow students. You’ll find as you help others, you’ll gain a better understanding of your study process. You’ll learn as you try to teach others – both in concepts and study skills. It was terrific to hear the guys in the last Fiji Emerging Leaders course voluntarily commit to support each other through their study journeys.
- Set clear expectations – what really matters? Now this point may not win me many friends in the tertiary sector. A lot of people are striving for the best result possible. On a five-point GPA (grade point average) scale, how important is it to get a five? Is that what employers really want? Now if you are doing an entry level course for an industry (eg teaching or engineering), the result may very well be a key factor to landing that job. But there are many ‘add-on’ degrees to industries where attaining the qualification is just one part of what’s beneficial or needed, and the GPA is irrelevant. Remember . . . what do employers want? Staff who are hungry, humble and smart (emotional intelligence). Setting your expectation to pass and gain the qualification may be all you need. Remember we are juggling here. [and i am sure I have just lost friends within the tertiary sector with this point . . . but i am here to caddy you, not them]
- Don’t lose sight of your rich life and enact it now. We described a rich life in Blog 12 as activities that could be as simple as a cup of coffee and reading the paper in the winter sun, going for a surf or dropping the kids off at school. Don’t run yourself into the ground in the process of gaining your qualification, but know those things that fill your emotional tank and try to build them into your life’s rhythm. You’ll be a more effective student if you do.
- And on this same theme . . . be kind to yourself. Protect your sleep and eat well. Be kind to those around you. You’ll think and study better when you do. Avoid taking shortcuts with your self-care.
While I used the analogy of juggling in this blog, perhaps it is more like spinning plates. You have multiple plates you are trying to keep spinning. If you can keep the momentum, the plates won’t fall and break.

©PresenterMedia
- That’s why taking time to plan is critical. Your planning rhythm should provide you with the mechanism to identify a wobbling plate and how to gain the time to recentre it. Take time to plan. That will help you catch the wobbles early and maintain momentum.

©QuoteFancy
Part-time study can require different strengths to work. It requires an application of deep work to gain results in restricted time frames. Part-time study is not for the feint hearted and takes courage. It’ll put pressure on your work and personal life. With good planning and self-care you will achieve.
Your life caddy
Your life caddy . . . when you need coaching, whether that’s life coaching, business coaching, entrepreneurial coaching or mentoring . . . to reset those attitudes, gain strategies with data driven approaches or build new habits and rhythms to give yourself that performance edge . . . Your life caddy is here for you. Subscribe now to keep up to date with weekly blogs, each one based on burning questions from professionals like you, seeking help.