There can be quite a few challenges when you’re a non-traditional student.

Not only are we balancing school, but we’re also managing work and life. To make it through this season successfully, it requires intentional time and energy management. It’s also important to be productive in a sustainable manner.

This post will cover time management tips for adult students, especially if you’re going back to school after a break (like I did). Plus, you’ll learn some effective productivity and prioritization strategies that you’ve probably never heard before.

Time Management Strategies for Non-Traditional Students

I’ve learned that in order to make proper adjustments in life, you need to know where you currently stand.

For example, if you’re trying to change your diet, you need to track what you currently eat. This will help you know what you need to adjust to meet the goals you’re trying to reach.

Here’s how you can create a base schedule to help you get started.

Take a time audit and see where your time is spent. 

Think about work, school, family, scrolling, and personal aspects. You can do this formally on a time tracker with Google Sheets or informally by keeping track in your head.

While you’re at it, do an energy audit as well! 

I’ve found that time and energy go hand in hand. 

Here’s what I mean:

You could have 20 free hours in your week to do homework outside of your job. However, if you’re mentally or emotionally drained 10 of those hours, you have only 10 hours to do effective work.

This is why it’s important to keep track of what drains and replenishes energy for you. 

For me, social gatherings often drain me (unless it’s people I truly trust). Work also drains energy from me. 

Creative things like blogging, drawing, and playing music replenishes my energy. Sleep does as well.

How to Create a Study Routine That Fits Your Life

The biggest problem I found when it comes to study advice online is that it often promotes too strict of schedules. 

These don’t work for me, and frankly cause anxiety and overwhelm.

Strict schedules can be a non-traditional student’s worst nightmare. 

Balancing your job, family, and class commitments is already difficult. Plus, especially if you have children, you need to have enough space in your schedule to move things around in case of emergencies. 

Instead of strict schedules, I like to give myself a balance of structure and flexibility. Here are some ways to do this:

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Make time blocking work for you

In order to use the time blocking strategy as a working student and allow the greatest amount of structure and flexibility, I recommend first adding your non-negotiables.

These are things in your schedule that are required. 

For me, that’s the hours of my full-time job, due dates, and important events I can’t miss. Those are the hours/times that I have little to no flexibility. Those are also non-negotiables in regards to my energy expenditures as well.

Everything else in my life can work around those times…for example, when I sleep and when I do homework.

Next include some hard priorities that could be moved around if really necessary. For example, date night with my husband is on Thursdays. This means no schoolwork when I get home. 

Make sure to include an hour or two a day for what I call Wild Cards. These are blocks where you can pick whatever you want to do during this period. 

This could be catching up on classwork, sleeping, relaxing, working on other responsibilities, etc. 

I designate my lunch break at work as a Wild Card hour. This is one of the best ways I’ve found to increase flexibility.

If you need more structure, a great online student tip is to set “fake class times” to stay accountable. 

Sometimes I need to do this when I get too comfortable in the ‘flexibility’ aspect of my schedule.

Make sure you’re also taking time to rest. 

I recommend picking a day where you don’t do anything work or school related. For me, that’s usually on Sundays. This is a great way to counteract the possibility of adult student burnout.

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Keep your organization systems simple

It’s easy to pick the prettiest method you see for organization and planning. But trust me when I say simple is better.

I have tried using everything from a simple notebook to complicated Notion dashboards, and I’ve learned that the best tools are the ones that you build out yourself for your life.

For any method, I recommend trying it out for 2 weeks to figure out your natural tendencies when it comes to keeping track of your life. 

For example, when I used a plain notebook, my best method was to just use a pen with no extra fancy stuff. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the extra color and designs I see online, it just takes too much work and energy to keep up with for me. 

This may be completely different for you.

My current method of organization is my dashboard that I’ve modified for me through an app called Obsidian. 

I keep it pretty simple with only the pages and folders I need. It allows me to access my stuff from anywhere, anytime, from any device for $5 a month. I use it to draft class assignments and keep track of other things in my life.

Whatever tool you decide to use (i.e., Google Calendar, Trello, Asana, Notes App), make sure it’s something you enjoy using and makes sense to you. 

This is the best way to develop a study and organization routine as a working student.

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Prioritization and Productivity Hacks that You Won’t Hear Anywhere Else (probably)

Next, let’s go over some prioritization tips  for busy students and productivity hacks for adult learners.

Stop overthinking the process of prioritization

When I returned to college online, one of my biggest stressors was figuring out what to do first. Especially when I was juggling multiple assignments at the same time. I wrote this article if you’re looking for more tips on this specific topic.

Anyways, there are many frameworks out there that can help you figure out what to do first. 

An example is the Eisenhower Matrix that involves analyzing if your tasks are urgent, important, neither, or both. 

This can be useful, but leads to analysis paralysis if multiple tasks or homework assignments are urgent and they’re all important. 

The best way to counteract this is to flip a coin/roll a dice (figuratively or literally) and just start on anything.

Picking something is better than picking nothing to do, even if what you pick isn’t the ‘bestest’ option.

Doing this has reduced overwhelm and saved me time when it comes to college assignments and tasks. I’m not wasting time ruminating over the next step.

Plus, once you make a good amount of progress on the task you’re working on, you can re-evaluate and see if it’s best to continue on the task you’re on, or get started with something else.

In other words, by getting started, you’ll learn the best way to prioritize as you go. This is why it’s important not to overthink. It will get done either way 🙂

How to get more stuff done faster

If you’re struggling with too much to do but too little time or energy, you may be spending too much time and effort on each task.

Ration your energy

When I was first learning how to balance work, school, and life as a non-traditional student, I was always clunked out by the end of the workday. This often meant I didn’t have much energy to do assignments after work.

Since we’re human, we have a limited amount of energy. As a result, we have to ration it like gold in order to make sure we accomplish what we need to.

What this meant was I had to let go of my need to get perfect grades on every assignment or being a top performer at work…at least for this season.

I reduced the amount of effort I put into everything by 20-40%. This meant bare minimum for work, and being okay with sacrificing A pluses for the occasional B.

And guess what?! I didn’t die. 

In fact, since this mindset change, I have still been getting decent results at work and school. Plus, I’m not as stressed out.

The moral of the story is to get rid of perfectionism so you can successfully do everything you need to. It’s very busy right now, so you need to save as much energy you can spare.

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Try not to multitask. Instead try task batching.

This seems so counterintuitive, but hear me out. 

If you’re trying to read your textbook while folding laundry, you might notice that it takes longer than if you were to just do one thing at a time.

Here’s why: you’re brain’s not actually multitasking…instead, it’s just quickly switching between whatever you’re working on. 

This is incredibly inefficient.

Instead, do one thing at a time. I have found this to be a better way to get things done faster and produce higher quality results.

To take it a step further, try batching similar work. What this means is that you work on similar tasks one after the other.

At my full-time job I batch tasks like this:

I work as a staffing agency recruiter, so my job consists of making a bunch of calls to job applicants, updating a lot of records, and doing a lot of paperwork.

I like to batch my calls together by purpose. For example, I’ll call job applicants for 30 minutes and document those calls while talking to them (basically taking notes during the call). This is to see if they’re qualified for the job they applied for.

Then I’ll spend 20 minutes calling employees with incomplete drug screens or forms they still need to fill out.

Then I’ll spend 5 minutes messaging employees who haven’t submitted their timesheets for the week.

I try not to mix and match because it means I can get distracted and forget something important.

I have found that batching my tasks like this helps me in every aspect of life. I recommend you try this to stay organized, focused, and efficient.

Clarity is key

If you feel scattered when it comes to your assignments, studying or even your schedule, it may mean that you have a lack of clarity.

In order to fix this, make a to-do list of whatever needs to be done and when the due date is.

Example:

• Finish drafting blog post due on Saturday
• Pick up blender from Mom’s house on Saturday
• Practice songs due on Sunday
• Finish drafting blog post due on Monday
• Start on Communications class project due Tuesday

Now that you have an overview of the big stuff, you can start on the one that’s pressing on your heart the most.

If you still lack clarity with this, come up with 3 actionable subtasks for the project you’re going to tackle.

Example: Finish drafting blog post

• Write section 2
• Write section 3
• Write conclusion

This is a simple example, but you can apply it for anything you need to complete.

Use “Study With Me” videos

Don’t feel like studying or doing homework? Or maybe you don’t have anyone to study with? Try putting on a Study With Me video from YouTube!

I love these because I take college classes online. 

This means that I don’t have as much access to study with colleagues from my classes. 

Study With Me videos are a great way to combat loneliness and find study motivation.

Conclusion

Going back to college as a working adult with responsibilities means that you have to adjust your expectations and methods in order to find success. 

You can do this with proper time management and effective productivity. These are skills that anyone can learn. 

And contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be doing something every single minute of every single day to make progress.

I know life in this season can be tough and overwhelming at times, but you will get through it.

Let me know in the comments what your biggest struggle is as a working student and how you’re making it work!