How to Balance Work, Study and Life While Preparing for the Contractor Licensing Exam

These days, it feels like everyone is burning the candle on both ends. Between your day job, your side hustles and, you know, sleep, it’s hard to imagine finding spare hours to study and take breaks. You can’t have an extra day in every week, but you can maximize each day to its fullest. Follow these tips to get more out of the time you spend on everything.

Block Out Time in Advance
Setting a schedule may not seem like the most revolutionary advice. However, even highly productive people struggle with it. It’s funny how something can be so important to you, but you still can’t seem to find the time to do it. When you’re spread thin on your schedule, you might find yourself doing nothing at all because everything is your first priority and you can’t choose.

Instead, block out time in small increments. It may feel chaotic to set aside 15 minutes or half an hour for studying at a time, but there’s a method to it. You’ll need a lot of effort to master a subject, but you will be more likely to invest that time if it comes in digestible chunks. Where setting aside three hours at once might be too overwhelming, a series of half-hour pieces throughout the day can be easier to achieve.

Recognize Your Bad Habits and Find Solutions
Why are the local gyms full of people in January working on their New Year’s resolutions, and virtually empty by mid-February? It’s because people think they can overcome their bad habits by deliberately ignoring them. Denying who you are and how you work can actually make your work-life balance harder. This is because you keep forcing yourself to operate in a way that feels unnatural.

As an alternative, you might acknowledge why you have certain behaviors and plan to minimize their effects. For example, procrastinating is common problem for students, but it usually has a purpose. Try to think about what you are getting from it, like the ability to delay making a difficult decision. Give yourself incentives for forming better habits, like additional relaxation time if you get your work done right away.

Work Smarter, Not Harder
When you have more to do than you have hours in the day, you have no time to waste. Paradoxically, this doesn’t mean that you have to get rid of leisure time. Time to rest and refresh is actually a vital part of your success. These tips will help you avoid losing productivity when you’re working, studying or doing chores at home:

• Start a routine that you can follow every day.
• Break down your expectations to tasks that you can easily achieve within a short period of time.
• Focus on the task at hand.
• Try to avoid worrying about what needs to come next.
• Filter out distractions that make it harder to be productive.
• Set goals for productivity instead of time spent.

Give yourself a few weeks to get used to a new way of doing things. If you’re realistic about what you are trying to do, you’ll find a practical rhythm.

Stay Healthy
Making sure that you have enough hours in the day to achieve your goals is dependent on your health. If you press yourself too hard, you are more likely to get sick or injured and risk throwing everything into chaos. Keep your health in check with these tips:

• Eat regularly, even if it’s several small meals throughout the day.
• Get plenty of exercise.
• Set healthy sleep habits, including a regular sleep schedule.
• Aim for comfort in your work, study and relaxation environments.
• Attend to health problems when they arise.

Paying attention to what your body needs will help you focus on getting work done.

Studying for the contractor licensing exam is something that a lot of people do on top of a full-time job and home life. It takes a plan to find the time without sacrificing your ability to be productive in every aspect of your life. With these tips and help from CSLS, you can prepare for a new career in a better way. To learn more, contact us today!