Week 10School-Work-Life Balance

Introduction & Expectations

The focus this week will be on School-Life-Work Balance.

Balancing the demands of school, work, and life can be difficult, but it is critical to your overall success - personally, professionally, and academically. For example, by devoting sufficient time to sleep and exercise, you will better focus in class and absorb more information from readings and lectures. In turn, adhering to this practice can reduce the amount of time you need to spend studying, making it even easier to balance your academic and professional obligations.

Striking an appropriate balance in these areas is also key to your mental health. For instance, setting aside time for your hobbies, like reading, hiking, or watching movies, can help lower your stress levels and increase motivation. Socializing with friends or family is also important, as a network of supportive relationships will help you cope with challenges in all areas of your life. Finally, setting clear goals and effectively managing your time may reduce feelings of anxiety and improve the quality of your work.

Preparation for week 10

The activities for this week will help you to reflect on school-work-life balance.

In order to optimize functioning, it is necessary to find a balance between the various roles one plays. Finding a good balance will necessitate self-awareness, time management, stress management, and self-care. One component of self-care is mindfulness and meditation. The readings, activities, and videos offered this week will familiarize you with related concepts and strategies

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Identify your self-care strategies, which help you to attend to your various responsibilities while also managing stress.
Incorporate a mindfulness activity into your week and consider how a mindfulness practice might influence your well-being.
Recognize the individuals who influence your work-life balance (e.g., family; mentors; faculty; employers)
Develop strategies for time and stress management that fit your current life circumstances

INTRODUCTION

The key to a satisfying and sustainable career is being able to cultivate work-life balance. This involves a healthy negotiation of attending to work responsibilities and professional goals while also carving out time for family, hobbies, and other personal interests. This will look differently for each person and shift across various stages of your life. For example, if you have young children, the ways in which you manage time will be different than when your children are older. This week's activities are designed to help you identify strategies to develop school-work-life balance habits and time-management goals, consider self-care activities, and engage in mindfulness.

SCHOOL - WORK - LIFE BALANCE

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Take inventory of your school-work-life balance
Determine your priorities
Identify 2-3 areas of change
Set a goal for implementing a change between now and the end of the semester

INTRODUCTION

The busier we get, the harder it is to draw a line between school, work, and personal time. This becomes especially difficult as technology allows us to work 24/7. Moreover, the COVID pandemic blurred our boundaries such that our home became our classroom, study space, and workplace.

As you can imagine, there are many benefits of a balanced life.

Creating balance between work, school, and life enables you to focus on many different areas of your well-being without letting one area overwhelm you and pull you down. A balanced life promotes productivity while it embraces personal growth and healthy living. The benefits of a balanced lifestyle are numerous and include:

Reduced stress levels
Improved job satisfaction
A deeper involvement in your education
A stronger connection with friends and family
Improved health

Balancing your commitments teaches you that it is equally important to make time for your family, pursuing personal goals, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It also means setting aside time to pursue your education and reach your professional goals.

Where do you fall on the school-work-life balance spectrum? Are you an expert at juggling all of the curve balls that life throws at you? Or are you struggling to keep your head above water?

Complete the Wheel of Life Activity below to take a "helicopter view" of your life, so you can bring things back into balance.

READINGS / ACTIVITIES

Complete the Wheel of Life Activity (CD14)

SUPPORTING MATERIALS

Link: Work-Life Balance Quiz

SELF-CARE

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Define self-care (what it is and what it isn't)
Learn effective strategies for emotional self-care, physical self-care, and spiritual self-care
Take the Self-Care Assessment and reflect on any patterns in your self-care
Set goals for your own self-care

INTRODUCTION

Self-care has many definitions (Godfrey et al., 2011); for the purposes of this class, self-care is defined as taking action to manage and cope with stress by taking care of oneself.

Self-care means doing things to take care of our minds, bodies, and souls by engaging in activities that promote well-being and reduce stress. Doing so enhances out ability to live fully, vibrantly, and effectively.

If you are anything like us, the idea of self-care is very important, but the guilt we feel for not always focusing on work overshadows this importance. It can be difficult to put your well-being as a top priority.

Know that self-care is not selfish. You must fill your own cup before you can pour into others.

Your needs are valid and a priority.

READINGS / ACTIVITIES

Read, "What Self-Care Is - and What It Isn't"

Take the Self-Care Assessment

Complete the Self-Care Plan (CD16)

ADDITIONAL SUPPORTING MATERIALS

self-care-for-parents

TIME MANAGEMENT

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Learn tips for managing time
Plan and prioritize assignments that will be due from now until the end of the semester
Reflect on typical distractions and how you will prevent or eliminate them

INTRODUCTION

Time is a valuable commodity, especially for graduate students who often feel it ticking away.

Effectively managing your time involves:

Planning
- To-do lists. Planners. Schedules. Whatever works best for you, do that. Plans create organization. They can help map out your day, week or semester and act as a visual aid.
Prioritizing
- Once you have a plan, prioritize. Some assignments are more important than others.
Limiting Distractions
- Distractions are everywhere, and avoiding them is becoming increasingly difficult. While trying to tackle schoolwork, try to remove as many as possible (even if this means leaving your phone in another room).
- It may also mean talking to others in your home to prevent distractions from occurring.
Finding Productive Moments
- Finding small pockets of time to be productive may be a necessity.
Breaking Up Your Workload
- Implement the Pomodoro Technique

READINGS / ACTIVITIES

Read "Where Do the Hours Go: Graduate Students and Procrastination Experts Share Their Best Time Management Tips"

Plan and prioritize assignments that will be due from now until the end of the semester.

Reflect on typical distractions and how you will prevent or eliminate them.

SUPPORTING MATERIALS

This Time Management Worksheet can help you identify how you currently spend your time and how you would prefer to spend your time.

STRESS MANAGEMENT

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Reflect on how you experience stress
Understand the stress response
Learn what triggers the stress response
Determine how you can inoculate yourself against stress
Manage stress by avoiding it, changing your thoughts, modifying your lifestyle, and learning relaxation techniques

INTRODUCTION

Pursuing a graduate degree is a giant step into a new world of opportunities. But it's a lot of pressure as well, and can lead to crushing anxiety and stress—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unfortunately, you’re not alone in this either. According to a survey by the American College Health Association (2018), 66% of graduate and professional students experienced above-average stress in the last year—and that was before the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, most college students experience stress. But graduate students face a unique set of pressures.

For example, a graduate student's relationship with their advisor can be a major contributor. Advisors may wield different expectations for each student. The hierarchy of power dynamics among students and faculty can thwart your focus and lead to a gauntlet of stressful situations. Feeling like you don't belong in your class, lab, or department can also be stressful. And if those feelings are related to your experience of microaggressions or discrimination, that stress can be debilitating. Graduate school requires you to balance work, class, studying, lab, research, finances, and life. Many graduate students further have partners and children tugging away at their time and energy just as much as their studies.

These issues make it all the more important for graduate students to consider healthy and effective strategies for managing stress.

Read the "Stress Management Workbook" below to reflect on:

How you experience stress
The stress response
What triggers the stress response
How you can inoculate yourself against stress
How you can manage stress by avoiding it, changing your thoughts, modifying your lifestyle, and learning relaxation techniques

Complete the "Strategies for Managing Stress (CD15)" activity below. In this activity you will reflect on four ways to deal with a stressful situation.

Strategy 1: Avoid the Stress
- Say "no"
- Alter behavior to avoid the stress
- Pare down your to-do-list
- Avoid or limit time with those who cause you stress
Strategy 2: Alter the Stressor
- Ask for help
- Schedule yourself differently
- Delegate
- Communicate your feelings
Strategy 3: Adapt to the Stressor
- Adopt a positive attitude towards the stressor
- Adjust your standards
- Recognize self-defeating thoughts
- See alternate perspectives
Strategy 4: Accept the Stressor
- Give yourself an incentive
- Accept things outside of your control
- See how you would do things differently next time
- Let go and move on

READINGS / ACTIVITIES

Read, "Stress Management Workbook"

Complete the "Strategies for Managing Stress (CD15)" activity.

SUPPORTING MATERIALS

Strategies for Managing Stress Table

MINDFULNESS - MEDITATION

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Practice one or more mindfulness exercises from options provided below and reflect upon its effects on your mood, energy, and thoughts.
Identify one or more mindfulness activities, which you plan to integrate into your weekly schedule.
Learn how a consistent mindfulness or meditation practice can help you manage stress and optimize your time.

INTRODUCTION

A common myth to finding a work-life balance is that personal and professional activities are split evenly and this 50/50 divide will result in a sense of satisfaction. However, each week does not always look the same and what is more helpful is developing the flexibility to shift according to each week's demands. One way to adjust to these day-to-day changes is by incorporating mindfulness or self-care practices into your routine.

READINGS / ACTIVITIES

Watch: Andy Puddicombe's "All it takes is 10 minutes of mindfulness"

Complete 5 or more activities from the Mindfulness Bingo Card. Link - mindfulness bingo.pdf
Listen to two or more of the following guided mindfulness exercises developed by the University of Utah's Mindfulness Center's Feel Better Now Workshop Practices
- Link: Feel Better Now Workshop Practices
- After completing two or more guided mindfulness exercises from the Feel Better Now series (above), complete a brief reflection assignment: Mindfulness Reflection

candid CONVERSATIONS

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Learn to acknowledge when you are overwhelmed at work/school, prioritize your tasks, ask for help.

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes you just actually have too much work. In fact, you have so too much work, that it is not even remotely possible to balance it all, let alone balance your life with it too. This may be something you can cope with for a few days, maybe a few weeks (like the week of finals, and a couple weeks leading up to it), but it's not possible to cope with this long term. To be more efficient, work with your professors, supervisors, boss, etc. to figure out how to prioritize and manage your workload.

Start with the time-management tools above to figure out your workload, and manage it. But what about when there is just too much work? And you realistically cannot do it all. (Or you can't do it all and still have a life) And it's going to be more than a few days/weeks of this? Ok,you have to get help from your professor/boss/supervisor to change, reduce, adjust your workload.

Start by writing down and organizing your work (see time management above). Highlight the work that you think is most important, that you most want to do. Note the work that is less important to you, or that you would rather not do now/might put off for later. Make an appointment to talk with your professor/boss/supervisor, and share your problem candidly with them. Perhaps you are spending more time on something than they thought. They might have a more efficient way for you to do this (so it actually should take you less time), maybe they just didn't realize how much time it would take (so it's taking more than they thought), maybe they'd rather you prioritized your time on something else. Talk with them candidly and honestly. Although you may feel very emotional about this, especially if you are overwhelmed, if you can see this conversation as just another problem solving strategy, that may help. Leave with a plan for at least one thing you are going to change. Plan to follow up (in a week or two) to let them know how it is going, and strategize again if the workload still needs to be adjusted.

SUPPORTING MATERIALS

how-to-tell-your-boss-you-have-too-much-work

how-to-ask-a-mentor-for-help

Learning Activities

Look for the Wednesday Discussion in which Dr. Karen Tao will guide you through a simple 10 minute mindfulness exercise. You will discuss catalysts and challenges for self-care and discuss the concept of "working smarter not harder" and how this may apply to you. Finally, you will talk about the important people in your life, ways in which they influence your self-care and mindful habits (for better or worse), and how to let bosses or supervisors know what you need to thrive.

Assignments (Homework)

Wheel of Life Activity (CD14)

Strategies for Managing Stress (CD15)

Self-Care Plan (CD16)

If your workload is not manageable today, review Candid Conversations above, and make an appointment to talk with your major advisor, class professors, boss at work, as needed, so that you can realistically manage your workload through the end of the semester.