As an executive MBA student, you will be attending school and completing a master's degree while continuing to work within your field. Attending a master's program and working a full-time, high-level job can be really demanding and make it really challenging to maintain a good work-life balance during this time period of your life.
Create a Detailed and Effective Schedule
When you are dealing with juggling classes, work, and your at-home commitments, you want to make sure you have mapped out an effective schedule. Don't just wing it and assume that you will be able to get everything done. Create a general schedule for how your weeks should go, and each week you should create a detailed schedule that shows all your time commitments. Having such a schedule will help ensure you have time for all of the commitments in your life and will help you plan to get things done in advance instead of putting yourself in a position with a lot of stress-induced deadlines.
Give Yourself Time in Your Schedule
Life cannot always be planned out, which is why you need to give yourself a little contingency time in your schedule. For example, if your coursework is due on Saturday evening, plan to get all your coursework done by Wednesday evening. That way, if an unexpected event occurs, or you get behind, you will have a built-in grace period of two and a half days to get your work done. By planning on getting all your work done ahead of time, you should never be late with an assignment.
Break Your Work into Smaller Chunks
If you set up your schedule so that you must do hours' worth of work at a time, it can be difficult to get that work done or have a feeling of accomplishment. Instead, break up your work into smaller chunks so that you don't have to cram to get your work done. Breaking your work up into smaller chunks will also make it easier to track your progress and maintain a sense of accomplishment.
Make Sure Your Job Is on Board
With an executive MBA program, you are not just going to school and work. What you are learning in school you will be expected to apply to your job. You will have certain tasks that you have to do at your job for school. Before signing up for an EMBA program, make sure your job is on board with being a partner in your education. You need them to be flexible with the information you bring in from school, and you need them to be willing to work with your program's requirements.
In order to maintain a work-life balance when attending an EMBA program, you need to create a detailed schedule that breaks your work up into smaller, manageable tasks and gives you the space to get everything done ahead of time. Make sure your job is on board before starting the program, as you need your job and school to work together for this to be successful. For more information, reach out to business schools you are considering attending.
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