Speaker 1: It sucks. You want to have fun but you have so many responsibilities holding you down. This was what my schedule looked like back in secondary school. Why would I do that to myself? But on the bright side, having such a hectic and slightly unhealthy schedule back in secondary school taught me an important lesson on how to balance life and work in university. I am not trying to encourage anyone to be as busy as possible. Being productive is good but rest is equally as important. However, here's how to balance school with your extracurricular activities while having a life. Let's go. First, separate your day into chunks. Split your day into three chunks. Before lunch, before dinner, and before sleep. During school days, split your day to before dinner and after dinner. This mentality helped me a lot with my procrastination. If you didn't do anything in the morning of your weekends, it doesn't mean that you flunked your entire day. You still have two more opportunities to be productive. Also, if you have a really long activity like band practice in the afternoon, you still have the whole chunk before lunch and after dinner to do what you want or need to do. For example, self-study, tuition classes, dancing, or shopping. This means that if you have a really long activity in the middle of the day, you wouldn't feel like your entire day is wasted if you think of your day as chunks. If you are very busy, you can think of breakfast, lunch, and dinner as their own chunks. These are opportunities to socialize. FaceTime or meet with your friends for a meal outside. Even on school days, you still need to eat anyway, so use that time to meet with your friends. If you think of your day as separate parts, then you'd be much more productive because you know that you need to start a new activity once a new chunk starts. If your entire day is just one blur, then you'd find yourself wasting a lot of time because there are no pit stops to keep you in check. Most importantly, if you decide to take a well-needed 9-hour rest on a Sunday, you wouldn't feel guilty about it because you know you can use the chunk after dinner to study. If you guys have difficulty being organized which will affect your work-life balance as a student, make sure you download my free Notion templates that I created specifically for you guys. There are three of them. First one to help you organize all your student responsibilities. Another to help you achieve your goals and one to plan your entire life productively. A lot of people don't know this but you can use Notion for fun things. It does not just have to be about work or school. Look at how other people have created their Notion setups. My student Notion template helps you automatically organize all your assignments and deadlines for you. It has a tracking system for your classes, revision plans, and so much more. My free life template has everything you need to help you organize your priorities, plan your goals, and help you live more intentionally. And lastly, my daily template helps you plan and execute your day-to-day schedule. I use Notion for my group projects as well because you can easily invite people to share and edit your document. Don't worry, Notion is a free app and website for both iOS and Android. Use it every day to get organized, write notes, plan your budget, collaborate, and so much more. I'll link my free Notion templates down in the description box below and my Notion video tutorial up here so be sure to check those out after watching this video. Now, how does this mentality of separating your day into parts help you organize your time? Let me explain. Fill out the empty space. If possible, try not to arrange for any activity to start in the middle of a chunk like in the middle of the afternoon or 9pm at night because I've noticed that I waste a lot of time before and after the activity. So this is the standard schedule that I came up with after reading all of your responses over on Instagram. Be sure to follow me there and also take a few seconds to subscribe to my YouTube channel right now. So for example, on a Saturday, you arrange for a tuition or any activity to occur in the middle of the day. After tuition at 4pm, you're gonna laze around until dinner. I do this all the time. If you have the option to, try to move your tuition class or any activity to the morning and have it end right before lunch. That way, you have no choice but to wake up and be productive, get one activity out of the way, then you can also go out with your friends for lunch straight away after class. Now, you can have a full day where you do anything you want. You can also move your tuition class or activity to right after dinner. That way, you free up your entire day. This is so much better than ending your activity at 3, 4, or 5pm which are odd times because you feel too lazy to do anything before your activity and afterwards, you also feel like you don't have enough time to do anything else because it's just one or two hours before dinner. I also noticed from your responses over on Instagram that a lot of you have back-to-back tuition classes. This is so much time wasted and what's worse is that you guys feel so exhausted by the end of your day. If possible, try separating these activities. Free up your time before dinner. Use the time after school till dinner to self-study at home or in the library. After that, you can have your dinner and then start class. Or you can also move these activities to right after school and before dinner. That way, you have a full 3-6 hours to do anything you want afterwards. Just try to have as little awkward gaps as possible between each activity because you can't really rest that well or even be productive during these short periods of time. Next, group your activities together. An advertisement might play in the next few seconds so if you want to support this channel, please do not skip the ads. Thank you. This really depends on personal preference but here's how I manage my time at university. I cram all my classes from Monday to Wednesday. This means that I'm free to do whatever I want from Thursday to Sunday. Usually, it's crying from stress but anyway. You cram everything that you need to do on the weekdays then leave your weekends free. If you don't have that flexibility, for example, you can't change the time of your dance class, try moving most of the activities that you can change the time for to that particular day. I know that this is really tiring but this would mean that you can free up a lot of time for your other days of the week. Or if you need to meet several of your friends, dedicate a whole day to do that. The concept is that you group all your activities together so that you do not have to waste any time in between. So you end up saving so much time in the long run. However, some of you might still prefer to spread out your activities throughout the week and that's okay as well but maybe this is something that you can consider trying. Next, make the most of your free time to save time. If you're studying in the morning or at night, just take out a rough piece of paper and write down all the keywords that you need to remember. It's okay if your handwriting reflects your mental state. During your class, in between classes, waiting for transport or in public transport, read your notes. These are all times where you can be productive so that you don't have as many things waiting for you back home after a long day. In between classes or before your teammates arrive for cheerleading, try finishing your homework. Back in secondary school, I always brought my homework wherever I went, even shopping with my mom. I would do my homework in the car or waiting for my meal. Basically, using up any free time that I had because I know that every minute I spent studying and finishing my homework now is every minute that I can take off later. Try building this habit but of course, when the time comes, put your work away and be present in the situation. Next, plot in time for yourself first. So schedule in your me time first then work your schedule around it. You'd be surprised to find that you'd still be able to get everything done and have some time for yourself. It's time to stop putting all your responsibilities first then making your mental health suffer. Check out my video on how to be more disciplined when studying here. Next, participate in group activities to substitute going out for socialization. You don't need to go out like shopping, clubbing or dinner with friends to socialize. If you're doing a lot of solo activities like playing music or playing golf, then it might help for you to participate in some group activities to bond with your friends. You also don't need to study alone. Study with your friends. I know it might not be as productive than if you were studying alone but seriously, it's not worth it to sacrifice your mental health just so you can do some extra math questions. If you've made it this far, comment down below. What type of activities do you take part in? Be sure to like, subscribe and turn on the notification bell as set to all so you do not miss out on any future uploads. Thank you all for 500,000... 527,000 subscribers and I'll see you all in my next video. Bye bye.