My personal mission is to help, positively inspire, and create any sort of opportunity to unleash my surroundings’ talents through my passion for music entrepreneurship, and education. My name is Adrianna Ramamonjisoa, I am from Madagascar and I am a full-time student at the African Leadership University majoring in Global Challenges with a focus on education and policy. At the same time, I am part of the learning design interns team at ALU and part of a music band on a fulltime agenda. That sounds cool for a moment, but how can a fulltime student effectively and consistently balance between studies, work, and a side project?

Well, based on my experiences, you have to ask yourself the following questions…

What is your reason behind it?

Every student knows that acquiring new knowledge and getting a degree is the principal reason why we’re coming to school every day. The same reasoning should be applied when it comes to other responsibilities because you are investing your time and energy to get to a destination or an end goal. What is your reason behind doing something? By asking yourself this question, it will lead you to think twice of what are you spending your time on and even revisit your priorities and where it will lead you to. It could be anything, it could be something that is part of your to-do list that is tied to prioritization and focus as the rule states that 80% of your success and results will be produced by 20% of your effort. This means it would be silly to focus your time equally among all of your tasks if only 20% of them will produce the vast majority of your success. You should focus your time on the most productive tasks. (Study.com. (2020).). To tie this to a student’s perspective, our day to day life can be easily overwhelming by workloads, relationships, social media and it is very easy for a student to get distracted and sleep on the most important things to get done with (depending on what’s important for you…) therefore, defining on what exactly you should spend time on will orient you better to good decision making, time management and will lead you to greater satisfaction as you’ll have ”reasons” on why you are undertaking something. 

(2020). [Middleburyimage].

Can you allocate time and commit to each of your responsibilities?

On my personal agenda, attending classes and delivering quality work are my top priorities, no matter how complex sparing time to my rehearsals, meetings, and other things can get, it’s always going to be after my academics. However, it’s good to remember to consider the opportunity side of things, so I learned to spare time on the weekends for our rehearsals and have my live performances in the evenings of weekdays after my classes, and as part of self-care, I try to have every day 7 hours of sleep whenever I can. Preparing yourself to be disciplined about the amount of time you are putting into every single thing you are doing and have no more than 6 things-to-do (a method I usually use that works best when you note them the night before!) to start your day fresh with some milestones that will get you productive. Also, it can be encouraging to reward yourself with a little music, vlogging, reading, or snacking after achieving one! According to Faculty.bucks.edu. (2020), you might have all the time in the world, but if you don’t use it wisely, it won’t help you to meet your goals as you’ll fall into procrastination which is a problem for everyone. It’s known that each student needs to create their space or own study environment when it comes to completing their readings and assignments, commit to your clear to-do list, and well spare your hours to be able to tick each of your prioritized tasks. Also, consider the theories of change, that motivation, unexpected calls, outings, unforeseen circumstances could come and change your plans for the day, it’s always good to have backup plans and learn to be proactive in achieving your tasks.

Are you ready to be flexible, proactive, and self-disciplined? 

From my perspective as a student, 

  • Flexibility is being able to adapt to arrangements that deviated from the original plan set for the day, week, month, or year.
  • Proactivity is planning ahead for future opportunities or challenges that might occur within times.
  • Self-discipline is being able to consciously think of the future impacts of whatever you are currently doing and focus accordingly.

It is important to consider those three key aspects of multitasking as a student as it could not only be helpful in school but also in our professional lives. It helps in boosting effective decision making, assertive communication skills, and lead to better work results. It’s fundamental to a student that wants to do multiple things and learn how to balance to find the reason behind why we’re taking the responsibility on something, can we commit to giving time to those tasks and can we consider the changes that could occur and learn how to be proactive and self-disciplined? That is for you to answer…

To corroborate, having multiple jobs is a great way of practicing multi-tasking but it all comes to the aforementioned questions, what are you doing with it, what’s your end goal, plan and can you learn to be self-discipline? If you have something to share, don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts below on the comments!

Thanks for reading!

References

Study.com. (2020). Prioritizing Goals: Importance & Steps – Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com. [online] Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/prioritizing-goals-importance-steps.html [Accessed 5 Mar. 2020].

. Managing Your Time and Study Environment. [online] Available at: http://faculty.bucks.edu/specpop/time-manage.htm [Accessed 5 Mar. 2020].
Verywell Health. (2020). 10 Top Health Benefits of Sleep. [online] Available at: https://www.verywellhealth.com/top-health-benefits-of-a-good-nights-sleep-2223766 [Accessed 5 Mar. 2020].

(2020). [Middleburyimage]. Retrieved 15 May 2020, from https://s18670.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/middelbury-poster-language-learning-final-1-14-5.jpg.