How I Manage My Time and Maximize My Efficiency— Juggling Two Jobs, Writing, Exercise, and Relationships
When I was twenty-three, everything felt like the end of the world. Thank God for frontal lobe development; it has truly saved my life. Even when the harsh realities of life crash down on me, when I’ve spent months in an up-and-down spiral, or when my stress feels inescapable, these minor inconveniences feel just like that: an inconvenience. A slight bump in the road. I’ve lived through 9/11, COVID, and Hurricane Helene. The world has ended thrice, but I wake up every day to find the world still spinning.
Nevertheless, I will not lie, I am still absolutely exhausted. But, aren’t we all?
Time seems to be the most fleeting resource in my life. As a professor and full-time volunteer coordinator, I must navigate the delicate balance between my passions and my restrictive responsibilities. My weeks are filled with various activities: writing, spending time with my girlfriend, leading volunteer groups, transporting food boxes across Western North Carolina, teaching classes, helping students, and all at once, prioritizing my mental and physical health. Juggling all of this takes an immense amount of discipline, prioritization, and time management, the latter of which I’ve been slowly mastering over the last three years since being in grad school and doubling my workload.
The biggest challenge has been organizing my time to hit the daily goals I set for myself: write for two hours, meditate for at least thirty minutes, do some physical activity for an hour, and leave enough time for reading, grading, working, or anything else I may be doing on any given day.
Most days, I take it hour by hour and step by step, and I rely heavily on to-do lists. I always have, and because of this, I really can’t recommend enough an App called “Tick Tick," available in the Apple or Google Play stores. I was initially skeptical but tired of writing down my physical to-do lists and losing them, even when I swore I put it in my pocket only an hour before. Instead, TickTick (which my girlfriend continuously confuses for TikTok) has given me more structure than any notebook, agenda, calendar, or planner. It allows me to sync any calendar with my to-do list. However, I’ve recently started using TickTick as my only calendar nowadays (before, I was an avid supporter of Google Calendar, but now I don’t even bother with the prehistoric design and horrific organization). With TickTick, I plan my day as soon as I wake up and can schedule what task needs to be done and when. Sometimes, I plan my week out in advance on Sundays, but TickTick is extremely easy to move, adjust, and delete items I no longer need on my to-do list. It is insanely satisfying to “tick” off an item and have it disappear completely, slowly watching as my to-do list gets smaller and smaller as the day goes on.
Additionally, TickTick has a fantastic feature that allows you to track your daily habits. I’ve recently been training for a 5k and taking creatine supplements for my workouts. As someone who struggles with drinking water throughout the day, TickTick sends me notifications for any habit I choose so I can continue drinking a gallon a day. This is especially useful to avoid the dreaded Creatine bloat! TickTick has its own designed habits, and you can make them yourself. So, everything I need in a day is already on my to-do lists, from drinking water and sweeping to exercise and reading a chapter daily.
I didn’t want this blog post to be a promotion, but TickTick truly has changed my life. If I’ve learned anything in the past three years of grad school, teaching, and being a community organizer, it’s been that perfection shouldn’t be the goal. Persistence is genuinely the key to success.
Some days, I barely scratch the surface of my to-do list. On other days, I’m lucky if I remember to eat lunch before diving headfirst into back-to-back student conferences or shuttling food boxes to families in need. I’m slowly learning that showing up consistently, even imperfectly, makes a massive difference in the grander scheme of my life. Even if I’m not benching half my body weight or running 3 miles daily, I still show up to do something physical. I still clean my house, even just a quick tidy-up and sweep. I still drink my water and walk around every hour. Progress may not be visible immediately, which is why I think so many people give up on their goals after a few weeks (I’m looking at the New Year's Eve Resolutions people; I listen, and I don’t judge, but try to stay consistent!). Progress isn’t always visible—it’s the accumulation of little victories, the pattern of not giving up, even when it feels like I’m running on fumes.
On hectic days, I often reflect on the younger version of myself. They would have seen the chaos of my everyday life and crumbled under its weight. But today, I know life is rarely as insurmountable as it feels. I've learned to embrace the messiness of it all, to accept that I won't always have it together, and to find my drive to stay persistent and keep going no matter what life throws my way.
That’s the secret: life will never be neatly packaged or perfectly balanced. Life will never turn out the way you’ve planned. Life is to be lived. Even when the world seems to be ending for the fourth—or fortieth—time, I know I’ll still wake up tomorrow and find it spinning. For now, that’s enough to keep me moving forward.
