Balance Academics and Extracurricular Activities are crucial for students. From classes, libraries, and lectures to family, friends, hobbies, and sports, find the right equilibrium for fulfilling college life. Balance Academic If you often find yourself in a situation where there simply is no time to perform tasks, don’t worry — time management is both the problem and the solution.
Did you know that a whopping 82% of people don’t have a dedicated time management system? We believe it’s a waste of great potential. Source: https://clockify.me/time-management-statistics
Well, guess what? It’s okay to face difficulties while balancing academic and personal life. We have measures to overcome such challenges; we need to find them, so let’s do it. Let’s look at some of the best and most effective ways to do it-
Balance Academics and Extracurricular Activities: Mantras & Tips
Time management is the key to Balance Academics and Extracurricular Activities
The first step toward balancing Academics and Extracurricular Activities is calculating the division of your time among your activities. You should spend your time wisely on essential activities, and if it is not helpful to you and your goal or your hobbies, you should stop doing it.
For example, you can allot time to your subjects according to your comfort level; it will help you to keep in touch with all the issues; you could wear a watch to have a record of your time spent on different activities or in between the activities and then try to eliminate the time spent of miscellaneous activities.
Prioritize your tasks while trying to Balance Academics and Extracurricular Activities
Finishing your essential studies before the other functions helps us focus better on each job. Now your brain will function without tension about the critical tasks; therefore, the other studies will be done more effectively and efficiently.
Ranking your tasks also helps in knowing what to do next without getting confused before commencing each next job. It will help you to save more time and your mental energy.
For example, you have to prepare for the physics exam, which is tomorrow, but your tailor had asked you to pick up your jeans by today; you could prioritize your physics exam preparation over the tailor because there are no time boundaries with the tailor, but with the case of a physics exam, you only have a few hours left for your exam.
If you want to Balance Academics and Extracurricular Activities ability to say a ” NO” is a must
When you are stuck under peer pressure, someone asking for your help, often, your ‘no’ will not be encouraged by society. But skipping the activities you don’t want to get involved in is necessary. Such activities you are not happy or excited about will waste your time and deplete your mental energy.
Preplanning
Planning your day-to-day tasks and creating a to-do list helps you to accomplish those tasks within the time boundary.
It will help you to complete your prevailing tasks on time or early and begin the next task on time. A Todo list can be either in the form of a small diary in your pocket or on the sticky notes in your study room.
Keep your inner circle small
Emphasize quality over quantity in friendships to ensure meaningful connections while managing academic responsibilities. Spend ample time with a select few friends for stronger bonds and balanced well-being.
For example, if you have 2 to 3 friends, you can spend a good amount of time with each of those friends in a week, but if there are nine friends, you will not be able to be with some of them properly or a lot of your time will be miss directed to be with each of them properly.
Seek help if needed
As an engineering student, technical information is needed quite often; it can be while experimenting in a lab or working in an internship, or even doing your college assignments; you might get stuck on a problem while working on it, it’s always better to try your best to find a solution on your own, but if you are unable to, instead of wasting any more time on the problem, seek out for help to your professors or superiors or even sometimes your friends if professors and superiors are not available.
It helps you get some extra knowledge about the topic, saves you time, and provides you insights to get out of a similar type of problem in the future.
Meditation
There are enormous benefits of meditation not only to our grandfathers and mothers but to the young generation too. Meditation helps with the maintenance of our soul and inner health.
Just like we trim our beards, cut our hair, take baths, and eat food at regular intervals, similarly, meditation is done to maintain our body from the inside. Doing meditation helps you reduce stress and anxiety; with meditation, you will practice calmness and patience, increasing self-awareness and mindfulness.
These elements will help you focus better in classes or lectures, and your concentration level will increase, meaning the same activity that costs you 80 minutes after meditation will take 60 minutes. Twenty minutes/ activity is not a lot, but with three activities, you’ll have one hour extra in your schedule; now that’s a lot.
Yoga
Practicing yoga a day keeps the doctor away. Reports by Comparecamp ( https://comparecamp.com/yoga-statistics/) shows that 15 minutes of yoga daily changes the brain’s chemistry and boosts mood.
Additionally, yoga will increase your body’s agility and flexibility and promote better sleep. These improved functions of your body will increase performance in almost every activity, from studying to engaging in your sports activities.
LNCT colleges not only provide the finest education but also take care of your health so that the children can focus on their studies. HOW? At LNCT colleges, regular sessions of meditation, as well as yoga, are conducted to ensure the health of the students. Go ahead and check it out by yourself at https://lnct.ac.in/activity-classes/
Prepare a schedule
Prepare a schedule for Balance Academics and Extracurricular Activities, especially for engineering students, works like Jarvis for Ironman. especially for engineering students, works like Jarvis for Ironman. Since engineering students always have plenty of tasks on their plate, systematically organizing them with the designated timing of each activity will not only reduce your burden of deciding what to do next but will help you save more time because it will remind you to get back to your work since you’ll have time limitations.
We must understand preplanning and the formation of a schedule; preplanning is concerned with deciding what to do and how to do it while scheduling will keep you informed about when to do it and in how much time.
Avoid distractions
You won’t even know where an hour flies if you engage with distractions. Some common distractions are social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat, gossiping with your friends while in the canteen or outside classes, and surfing on the internet with no objective.
These are very common and easily accessible; prepare your mindset to avoid these distractions as much as you can because these will never bring any good to your plate.
The forgotten fun parts
Sometimes, we are so indulged in books, submitting files, and lectures that we need to remember to enjoy or take a break. While you are in college, it is not just about studying; there are always many fun activities around you, like concerts, various clubs, and committees, pick out any of your hobbies, and you’ll find an activity going on in your college.
For example, at LNCT College, you can participate in various clubs like hackathons (for coding quests), music, photography, artificial intelligence, etc. You don’t have to find somewhere else to have fun while learning with the LNCT group of colleges.
Sports
Be active in your sports, and practice them whenever you have free time because you get enormous opportunities to play and compete at district and national levels. Additionally, you can attach those titles to your resume, which adds stars to your resume.
Also, if you need help allocating time for sports, you can play after college or come early to college and play at that time because there are a lot of students who do that, so you will find players to play with too.
There’s always additional help when you are struggling to keep your work and social life aligned, and it is best to reach out for those measures because sometimes when your friends, family, professors or your colleagues are unable to help you, books, self-help courses are the best way to find help. Below are some of the best help you can get to learn how to balance your academic and personal life.
Books to help you Balance Academics and Extracurricular Activities:
ATOMIC HABITS
Description: Atomic Habits teaches you the best techniques to quickly and effortlessly add productive and helpful habits to your life and daily schedule.
Author: James Clear
Page numbers: 288
Reference link: https://www.amazon.in/Atomic-Habits-James-Clear/dp/1847941834
OFF BALANCE
Description: Off Balance is much more than a book. It describes a technique Matthew Kelly uses with his Fortune 500 customers, staff, and himself to increase personal and professional fulfillment. He presents us with three modern philosophies that are bringing us down. He shows us how to cultivate energy so that we have enough for our passions after we have completed our tasks. Finally, he shows us how to apply his Personal and Professional Satisfaction System to identify our priorities and honors them even when we feel pushed in a hundred different directions in five simple stages.
Author: Matthew Kelly
Page numbers: 132
Reference link: https://amzn.eu/d/cnroe1G
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Description: Greg McKeown prioritizes performing the correct tasks instead of focusing on getting more done in less time. The book assists readers in determining what is necessary and eliminating time-wasting tasks.
Author: Greg McKeown
Page numbers: 288
Reference link: https://amzn.eu/d/gqgXcXG
Course to help you balance Academics and Personal Life
Course name: Take charge of your time
Description: A Time Management course in which the host presents three concepts to help you brainstorm how to manage your time for academic and extracurricular activities. It’s a jam-packed course with pre-recorded videos, live sessions, notes, exercises, frameworks, and mental models to help you become a TIME MANAGEMENT NINJA.
Link for the course: https://webveda.ankurwarikoo.com/course/time-management
Balancing academic and personal life can be a challenging task, but it can be made easy if you learn how to keep it easy. Once you’ve learned that is when you will start to see how easy it can be. Using techniques like the formation of a schedule, avoiding distractions, and practicing yoga and meditation will ease up balancing academics. Additionally, you have some of the greatest books to help you with balancing time and the course teaches you further.
