Being an apprentice means you will have to be working on many things at once. For example you will be working, going to college/ university, studying, networking and attending to your own personal life. Without proper time management you will find that each of these things will pile up on each other and you will start falling behind on tasks which will inadvertently impact your mental health.
To balance your time at work, you should look at your working hours and at your average tasks for the day and how long each one roughly takes you. With this information you can see what takes the longest time and you can talk with your mentors and managers about any more efficient ways to complete that task. This will cut back on working through your lunch break or working overtime.
Some people may find that their commute to work is very long, meaning that their work days are much longer. Some companies allow you to have hybrid working, so that you can work online from home some days of the week and in the office other days of the week. Asking your manager if this is something they offer will help you have a shorter working day and reduce the stress of commuting everyday.
Being able to motivate yourself and finding time to study outside of work hours can be quite difficult. The best way to make sure you have enough time for each assignment is to create a timetable. Your college/university should give you a list of assignments and exams that are coming up in the year. With this list, you will be able to see how much time you have between assignments, factoring in your time at work and personal commitments so you are able to find rough times when you can study and complete each assignment. It is also always best to overestimate the amount of time you will need for an assignment as you don’t want to risk running out of time due to it taking longer than expected. When you are working, you should be taking sufficient breaks as this will prevent burnout which will impact your ability to complete tasks.
Being at the beginning of your career, it is good to network and find events that suit you. Joining in social events at work and connecting with people in the same industry as you on LinkedIn who promote events will help you network with a range of people in different stages of their career. When you find networking events, look if it will benefit you, does it include apprentices, people in your industry or speakers explaining how to gain a specific skill set. Once you have decided if the event is for you, schedule that into your timetable making sure you have time to get to the event. Using this method will ensure you aren’t attending every event you come across which could be unhelpful for you or be repeating information you already know and taking up valuable time you could be using for your personal life.
