juggling work, study, parenting and the rest of life

A lot of people tell me I'm mad to be juggling a full-time job, part-time study alongside being a new parent to a little boy we adopted less than one year ago, plus still have time to socialize, see friends and do other things I enjoy such as cooking, reading and watching tv.

The truth is, I've always kept myself busy doing stuff. It just so happens that the stuff I am busy doing now could be seen to be more important than the stuff I did before I gained all these responsibilities. Before I bought a house, found a demanding job and started studying, I would have regularly gone out to see friends, traveled around at the weekend and I partied too much. I enjoyed all of that and don't regret anything. But there comes a time in your life when you just cant stay up late and party then get up to work and have a responsible life. It was like a switch where I suddenly had a complete change in what I wanted to do and how I wanted to spend my time.

Getting accepted onto a doctoral course was equally exciting and terrifying but I knew it was something I always wanted to do and I also knew it was something that I would enjoy doing. I was worried about the length of time I had been away from being a student (almost 15 years) and I lacked confidence in my abilities to be able to a good student.

In my job, I work with academics helping them engage with businesses and industries to find opportunities to commercialize their research and expertise. I work predominantly with the faculty of business and law but I have completed projects with academics in other faculties as well as cross-faculty projects. There's one of e working with approximately 500 academics although in fairness I probably only work with handfuls at a time as others have different priorities. I have to be organized and I have to have my time planned and schedule up to date to be able to succeed. I've got into good habits with my work-life and a lot of this has carried over into my study and other life planning.

I'm normally home from work by about 6pm and I then try and study for a couple of hours in the evening to keep on top of my studies. This works well if my day hasn't been insane and everything goes to plan. I normally manage some effective studying. My study time is split up into sections: reading and note-taking, study and research skills, sourcing reading materials, planning out essays, chapters, etc. I also set myself a challenge recently to read 30 pages per day of my current book relating to my studies. I tick this off in my calendar task list when complete and it's a nice feeling of achievement to tick things off. I also ensure that once or twice a month I will have a full day at my desk working on my studies and getting deeper into research and reading and planning my thesis project. this works out well most of the time and although it sounds terrible to spend a full day studying, I feel that once I get into it I really get into it and start to make real headway.

Guidelines say that doing a doctorate degree part-time requires anywhere between 10 and 15 hours per week of self-study which averages 2 hours per day if you were to study 7 days per week. between my evenings of study and my days of longer study, I think I am hitting this amount.

For my studies I keep a research diary - I bought a diary that has one page per day. In there I make notes of what I have been doing, any thoughts and ideas I am having relating to my studies, my research project related conversation notes and anything else that relates to my studies.

I make use of tech where I can and I have reminders all over my Gmail calendar, I use Any.do as an app to make to-do lists (although ti winds me up as its always pushing to get the paid version) and I'd be lost without Zotero for my literature and citations and my student One drive for accessing all my files from anywhere. I use Twitter to see find out what other Ph.D. students are doing to join conversations and to ask questions relating to my studies. I think Twitter is a really useful tool and I don't think I use it as much as I could so I am hoping to up my Twitter game. I can access all these from my phone and my Ipad meaning I can study anywhere and also double check things easily as its all to hand.

For me, it's all about chopping the day up into pieces, where I can and sometimes multi-task if needed. It works for me now but I am not sure if I will have to change things to ensure that I can manage to get through my large research project in the time I have set myself.

This all sounds perfect and well organized but sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes I am knackered and sometimes I just can't face studying for a day. I always give myself a break here and listen to how I feel and I then try to plan in the study time in another place so that I don't fall behind.

Do you have any good tips or ideas for juggling the many things that life throws at you? I'd love to hear any tips or advice that could help me streamline how I organize things.