Combatting part-time exhaustion.
I work on my PhD part-time, alongside the office job I do on Monday - Thursday, which can be pretty exhausting. A colleague, who started a masters this year alongside work, recently asked me for any top tips to manage uni and work. I don’t think I came up with any particularly revolutionary ideas, but I thought I’d share what I do here in case it helps anyone else out.
Early bird, night owl, or brunching heron?
You need to work out when you work best. Arey you an early bird, night owl, or what I like to call a ‘brunching heron’ (11 - 2 is your peak)? Just because online gurus say ‘wake up at 5 and your whole life will be fixed’, if that doesn’t fit your rythm and patterns then it just wont work for you. This can change over time, so just keep assessing where your energy levels are at their peak and exploit that.
Avoid time burglars
Once you’ve worked out when works best for you schedule uni work into your diary - give yourseld specific time blocks where you know that’s what you’ll be doing and then everything else goes in around it. You can do this within your work day too - prepping lunch ahead of time and then using your entire lunch break as a uni work block. This helps keep you focused, on track, and avoiding time burglars that want to come and take your attention away from your studies.
Mirroring
One thing that can be useful is ‘mirroring’ or having a study buddy. Using one of those time blocks to go to the library with a friend keeps you accountable and helps you actually settle down to do the task. That is, of course, not an option for everyone all, or even some, of the time. It doesn’t work for me - I often start uni work at about 6am before my work day starts, or am going till 11pm. My schdule can be hectic, and varied and I can’t partner with someone. As an alternative, I pop on a ‘study with me’ video on YouTube that includes a pomodoro counter (to ensure I get breaks) and provides the same sense of working with someone. I then have that on throughout my timeblock to keep me focused. I personally enjoy this one.
Think about your study flow
When you have a hectic life with lots of commitments you have to maximise your time and effort and a good way to do that is to think about and hone your study flow. For example when I’m in a reading phase of work, I like to:
Do the reading - adding post its, and maybe highlighting of bits of information I think are interesting or relevant
Go back through the reading hitting those post it’d sections and make rough notes on reading into a word doc that starts with a crib sheet where I can summarise and add in links etc.
Take those rough notes and add them into my Zettelkasten system (I use a programme called Obsidian). This can take some time but it then makes the writing process much smoother and quicker - I can often crank out a couple thousand words pretty quickly as a lot of my thinking has already been done using the Zettelkasten.
Study leave
Sometimes, no matter how organised you are if you work and study there comes a moment where you just need to not be working. So this is all about maximising any in-work benefits you might have. Check your company policies - can you get any study leave to help you at key points (in the lead up to essays being due for example). If you can get them, use them. If you can’t, think about how best you can deploy annual leave for maximum impact.
Track your progress
This isn’t a time management tip so to speak, but it’s a way to help track your progress. Sometimes, doing uni alongside working can make your uni progress feel quite slow, and it’s hard to recognise where you’ve taken steps forward. To combat that, I have a spreadsheet where every little thing I do is noted down. This can be as simple as ‘replied to email from supervisor’ or ‘wrote 30 words of my chapter’ to big things like ‘finished an article that I’ve sent to be published’. Basically treat everything you do as a win - because sometimes managing to send that one email really is a win. I also like to include links to documents I’ve been working on if relevant as it can be a quick and easy way to get to current documents without having to search through folders (saving valuable seconds and irritation). This can really help you see the wins where you might think you’ve not accomplished anything.
Take time off
Sometimes, what you actually need is to take time off because no matter how much you time block, or track your progress, and try to squeeze in work in the spaces you have you actually need to just stop. Stop thinking about uni, stop thinking about work, relax, do something else - in my non-work time I am normally found either doing my PhD, gardening, or working on textile crafts like my sampler at the top of this post. So when you need to take time off - do, and don’t beat yourself up about it. You need to rest, and that’s an important part of the process. Particularly if you’re doing a PhD part time - you’re looking at 6 or 7 years of this. It’s a marathon not a sprint. There’s no award for finishing quickest, you want to enjoy the process and not get burnt out, so if you need to just relax. Publishing this on 1 December, I hope everyone manages to get some relaxation time in over the holidays - you deserve it!
