Separation of life, work, and school

It’s tough. Especially for those who decide to work part time throughout university. But it’s so important if you want to actually succeed in all three.

I have a few tips that I’ve found helpful for balancing the three.

Separate email. Use a different email for work, school, and personal. This can easily be done by using your school’s email address for school, your work email for work, and picking up a gmail account for personal use. Also, check these separately or you’re defeating the point of having them separate. If you’re setting aside a day to study, don’t be tempted to check your work or personal email. Your midterm is your first priority that day, mom and the boss can wait.

Don’t use your room to study or work. Your room is your sanctuary, use it for personal reasons only – a place to sleep, unwind, read for pleasure, have sex, listen to music, etc. Don’t bring work or school into your room. This is extremely hard for most people, especially students who have their desk set up in their rooms. Lets be honest, grabbing that Advanced Physics book and trying to study for your midterm while laying in bed will not only prove unsuccessful, but it will also take away from the quality of your sleep. The same goes for working long hours on the desk beside your bed, and then trying to roll into bed and fall asleep, you’ve created a work atmosphere in your room that’s going to take away from the quality of your sleep.

Lastly, take 5 minutes the night before and identify the three most important tasks for the next day. It doesn’t matter if they are personal, work, or school related, just write these tasks down on a small piece of paper. Circle the most important task – the one that if you got nothing else done that day except that task you would feel you had a successful day. Make this task the first thing you do when you wake up. It could be calling regarding apartment rentals, writing your ethics paper, or taking care of an important customer inquiry.

These are just a few things to help with the separation. I’ve been very much following Timothy Ferriss on lifestyle design, and I recommend both his book and blog to those who are looking at becoming a little more effective and efficient.