What Time Strategies Do You Recommend for a Part-Time Student with a Job?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.700 | All right, let's move on to some questions about deep work.

00:00:09.200 | Our first question comes from Jamie.

00:00:12.100 | Jamie says, "If you work a 9-to-5 job

00:00:16.900 | and would like to study part-time for postgraduate studies,

00:00:21.500 | what time management strategies would you suggest

00:00:24.300 | or type of planning would you do,

00:00:26.400 | as well as what techniques would you use

00:00:28.200 | to learn the information faster?"

00:00:31.100 | Well, Jamie, if you're going to do academic work

00:00:36.400 | and you have time constraints, like you have here,

00:00:38.800 | you have a 9-to-5 job and you have to fit this around,

00:00:41.300 | deploying a strategy that I call the student workday

00:00:45.800 | is probably going to be particularly important.

00:00:48.600 | Now, this is an idea that I used to expound

00:00:50.800 | back in the early days of my blog

00:00:53.000 | when I was talking primarily to students

00:00:55.000 | who had busy schedules.

00:00:57.500 | And the idea behind the student workday

00:00:59.000 | was to look at the classes you were taking

00:01:01.000 | and then identify,

00:01:03.100 | what is the work that I know has to happen

00:01:06.000 | on a repeated basis?

00:01:07.000 | Is it a reading assignments

00:01:08.700 | that have to get done every week,

00:01:10.000 | a lab report that has to get written up every two weeks,

00:01:12.700 | a problem set that has to be solved weekly,

00:01:15.400 | or whatever it is?

00:01:16.200 | Figure out the work that you know happens repeatedly

00:01:19.300 | and answer the question of,

00:01:21.100 | when am I going to do that work?

00:01:23.400 | Same time, same days, every week.

00:01:26.700 | You actually put that on your calendar,

00:01:28.500 | just like you have your dentist appointment

00:01:30.900 | or meeting a friend for drinks.

00:01:32.400 | You have to figure this out.

00:01:33.500 | You work a 9-to-5 job,

00:01:35.200 | so you might not have a lot of options,

00:01:36.600 | but the work has to get done.

00:01:37.700 | So identify where that work is going to happen.

00:01:40.200 | Maybe you have an 8am to 9am block

00:01:43.400 | on a day that you work from home

00:01:44.800 | and that's when you do the first draft of your problem set

00:01:46.900 | and you do that on Mondays.

00:01:48.300 | And then after dinner,

00:01:49.700 | you do a 6-to-7.30 block to finish off that problem set.

00:01:53.000 | Maybe you take 90 minutes out of the middle of the days

00:01:56.100 | on Wednesday to do your reading assignments,

00:01:57.900 | because again, maybe you have some flexibility

00:02:00.000 | and you can find that time

00:02:01.600 | and there's a conference room in your office

00:02:03.000 | that you can go to that's quiet

00:02:04.300 | and a good place to do that work.

00:02:05.600 | But you figure out,

00:02:06.600 | this is all the work that has to get done on a regular basis.

00:02:09.000 | This is when I do it, this time, this day.

00:02:12.200 | I don't have to think about it.

00:02:14.300 | It's routine.

00:02:15.000 | Advanced tip here,

00:02:16.800 | throw in where that work happens.

00:02:18.500 | Okay, as long as I'm fixing when it happens,

00:02:20.300 | why don't I also throw in where?

00:02:22.400 | So that I can find locations

00:02:24.700 | I associate just with that work

00:02:26.600 | and it leads to me shifting into a deep work mode quicker.

00:02:30.800 | So I go to this library to do this work.

00:02:33.600 | I have a home office in my basement for that work.

00:02:35.500 | You want that ritual and routine surrounding this work.

00:02:38.200 | What I'm trying to do for you here, Jamie,

00:02:40.600 | is get rid of any on-the-fly decision-making

00:02:44.200 | about what should I do today?

00:02:46.100 | What's due soon?

00:02:47.900 | That's what's going to get you in trouble.

00:02:50.100 | If you just fly by the seat of your pants

00:02:51.700 | and say, "Oh man, I got something due tomorrow

00:02:53.500 | and I was at work and I went to dinner

00:02:55.400 | and I went to the gym and it's eight

00:02:56.700 | and it's going to take four hours."

00:02:58.200 | That's where you get into trouble.

00:02:59.900 | So find when and where that work is going to happen,

00:03:02.900 | fix on your calendar, stop thinking about scheduling.

00:03:05.100 | Now, what happens if you can't fit it?

00:03:07.900 | It's just not reasonable.

00:03:09.300 | You're taking up every evening

00:03:10.600 | and it's taking up all your hours

00:03:11.800 | and you have no give, you have no time for exercise,

00:03:14.100 | you have no time for dinner.

00:03:15.200 | Well, now you are facing that productivity dragon.

00:03:19.100 | This is the reality.

00:03:19.900 | I don't have time.

00:03:20.600 | If you don't have time, you have to see you don't have time.

00:03:23.400 | This happens more than you would think.

00:03:25.400 | There's a semi-famous to me,

00:03:29.200 | I'll say important to me blog post I wrote years ago.

00:03:32.300 | It must have been like 2008, maybe even 2007

00:03:36.400 | and it was about a student I was advising at MIT.

00:03:39.100 | She didn't work a nine-to-five job,

00:03:40.800 | but the number of activities that she was involved with

00:03:43.300 | might as well been a nine-to-five job.

00:03:45.100 | We went through this exercise.

00:03:47.300 | What's everything you need to do on a regular basis?

00:03:49.900 | Let's find time for it on the calendar

00:03:51.800 | and we couldn't fit it.

00:03:53.900 | We ran out of room.

00:03:54.900 | And I said to her, her name was Lena,

00:03:57.800 | "Lena, you obviously are doing too much.

00:04:00.900 | I'm looking at this calendar.

00:04:02.200 | We cannot actually fit the work.

00:04:03.800 | The work is the work.

00:04:04.600 | We can't fit it in.

00:04:05.400 | We made it as efficient as possible.

00:04:06.600 | We can't fit it in."

00:04:07.500 | But she couldn't bear say no,

00:04:10.100 | she couldn't sit and bear say no to things.

00:04:12.100 | She couldn't take things off of her plate.

00:04:13.500 | The next semester she had to go on leave for mental health.

00:04:17.300 | It just completely overwhelmed her.

00:04:19.200 | So I always say you got to face the productivity dragon here.

00:04:22.000 | Here's what I want to do.

00:04:22.800 | When am I going to do it?

00:04:23.900 | If you have time, good.

00:04:24.800 | And if you don't, you might want to rethink this plan.

00:04:26.600 | Only then, once you know when this work is going to happen

00:04:30.300 | and where it's going to happen

00:04:31.200 | and it all fits nicely into your schedule

00:04:32.800 | and you're not thinking about scheduling

00:04:34.000 | and you're not making decisions on the fly,

00:04:35.500 | you're not staying up late all night

00:04:36.800 | because you forgot about your problem set

00:04:38.200 | until late the night before.

00:04:39.500 | Once you've done all that,

00:04:40.900 | then care about your study habits themselves.

00:04:43.600 | You want to make these blocks as small as possible

00:04:45.700 | while still getting the work done well.

00:04:47.800 | That comes down to how you study.

00:04:50.500 | I would recommend my book,

00:04:52.700 | How to Become a Straight-A Student,

00:04:54.300 | for a deep dive on how the most efficient students

00:04:58.400 | get their work done.

00:04:59.900 | I will just give you two very brief hints

00:05:02.700 | about what you're going to find in there.

00:05:04.200 | Hint number one,

00:05:05.900 | your work accomplished as a student

00:05:09.100 | is the product of the time you spend

00:05:11.500 | and the intensity of your focus.

00:05:13.800 | So if you are trying to do your schoolwork

00:05:16.800 | with a low intensity of focus,

00:05:18.700 | i.e. you're looking at your phone,

00:05:21.200 | you're looking at email,

00:05:22.100 | you're looking at Slack,

00:05:22.900 | you have the TV in the background,

00:05:24.600 | it's going to take a lot more time in that equation

00:05:27.200 | to get the same amount of work done

00:05:28.700 | versus if when you work,

00:05:30.500 | you're 100% focused,

00:05:32.400 | that intensity of focus is maxed out,

00:05:34.300 | the time required to get the work done

00:05:36.200 | is going to go down.

00:05:37.000 | You need to hack that equation

00:05:39.500 | if you're going to get this work done

00:05:40.800 | with a nine to five job.

00:05:41.800 | Two,

00:05:42.800 | banish the word study from your vocabulary.

00:05:46.700 | That's way too vague.

00:05:48.200 | That's way too emotional.

00:05:50.800 | You got to be instead incredibly specific

00:05:52.700 | for this type of work.

00:05:54.300 | How am I going to do it?

00:05:55.900 | And what evidence do I have

00:05:56.900 | that this is the right way to do it?

00:05:58.200 | How to become a straight-A student

00:06:00.300 | will get you all those details.

00:06:01.500 | It'll walk you down that path,

00:06:02.600 | but those are the big picture summaries

00:06:04.800 | of what you might find.

00:06:05.600 | All right, so summary,

00:06:06.500 | schedule all your work in advance.

00:06:07.900 | You know when it's going to happen

00:06:09.200 | and then two,

00:06:10.100 | get very serious about your work habits

00:06:12.200 | once that time set aside.

00:06:13.500 | That's your best bet to succeed

00:06:15.900 | with studies,

00:06:17.600 | with a full-time job,

00:06:19.800 | without making your life

00:06:21.000 | into a joyless grind.

00:06:22.800 | [Music]

What Time Strategies Do You Recommend for a Part-Time Student with a Job?

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