Full-time working students should be deemed more resilient than Superman will ever be. They spend eight hours accomplishing grueling tasks. After that, they go to class, and after class, they power through homework. It’s an exhausting hustle, but it’s one they need to power through. Here are four essentials a working student needs to survive:
Time Management
Time management is incredibly important for working students because this will pave the way for balancing their lives. It also helps them focus on their tasks and be motivated to finish them.
Time management is more than just scheduling a person’s day. It needs to consider the amount of time the brain can focus and how much rest it needs. The attention span of the brain can vary in lengths, depending on the person. Business Insider suggests 52 minutes of work and 17 minutes of rest.
Downtime is crucial to maintain productivity because maxing out the brain can lead to a lack of self-control and an increase in impulsivity. Both are counterproductive to the day’s intentions of accomplishing tasks.
This information helps you to keep up with work and in school. While handling an 8-hour workday, the brain needs some time to rest to survive until 5 p.m. Studying, on the other hand, requires the brain to take some time to process information and store it in the person’s memory.
Mental Health Check
Working and going to school at the same time is a fast track to overworking the brain. From morning ’til late at night, the person continually processes information while staying active. Because of this, it’s easy to burnout.
Burnout results from prolonged stress that manifests itself in exhaustion, alienation, cynicism, isolation, and emotional distress. The person can have reduced and inefficient performance, leading to a decline in productivity. They can also feel drained all the time, coupled with a difficulty coping in situations which would have been easy to sort.
Seeing a professional at a private mental health facility can aid in the recovery of burnout. They guide the person through their feelings, help them sort out emotions, and prescribe possible solutions.
On the other hand, if seeking professional help is out of the budget, taking time-off could be life-changing. During this time-off, try to get in touch with hobbies, favorite shows, movies, and music, and hang out with friends and family. These can aid in bringing back their sense of self as well as alleviate feelings of isolation.
Sleep
Getting enough sleep is a smart way of getting things done. People may not realize it, as sleep is one of the things busy people willingly give up.
When one comes to think about it, sleeping could be the secret ingredient to productivity. Sleep is crucial to brain functions. With enough sleep, the brain can learn and retain information better. Enough sleep boosts a person’s mood, so they don’t have to go through a busy day cranky and groggy—overall, improving how they go about with their days.
Therefore, clocking in seven to eight hours of sleep every night is not a waste of valuable time. It conditions the brain for a lot of work the next day. After all, what good is not sleeping when you feel like falling asleep after every page. It’s a massive disturbance to one’s focus, making them take more time to finish one task.
Strong Support System
Whenever someone feels down and about to give up, talking to someone lessens the burden. It helps people make sense of what they’re feeling. Thoughts are abstract and arbitrary. This is why it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what you’re feeling at a certain time.
By talking about feelings, people attach words to them, explaining them, and putting them out to the world. This is what they call “affect labeling” or simply the labeling of emotions. When an emotion is identified, the person will have an inkling of how to deal with it. Provided that the person is emotionally intelligent and has healthy coping mechanisms, they will know which course of action to take for fear, sadness, happiness, etc.
The role of the support system is to be there for the person experiencing troubles. The mere presence of other people can already be comforting. Additionally, they are a source of advice, a voice of reason, or people you can share a laugh with.
It’s not easy, but these people learn significant skills that become the secret to their success and sanity. They have tools to survive every semester and every month. Perhaps, it’s about working smart and staying in tune with the needs of oneself.
