Tips to balance career and DBA
Coming back to school while working is not something that easy to go through. I realise when I registered for Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA), it is crucial to be able to balance work and study. DBA is a doctoral level program. It is very different from PHD. DBA is focus more on solving the industry issue. This makes the weightage for research is a bit lighter than PHD research. However as most of DBA candidates are full time working individual, the challenge is to balance out working and studying. As i am searching for ways to balance the two world, I found a few good tips. I am sharing the tips here.
7 Tips to balance
Do not procrastinate
When you plan to do something get it done. Do not procrastinate. Procrastination has many faces. Sometimes it’s simply choosing pleasure over discipline. Sometimes it’s an attempt to avoid something negative. And sometimes it’s getting paralyzed by overwhelming expectations. So there are many reason to procrastinate. When balancing the life, careers and DBA practicing procrastinate will not help anyone. So start planning and do it!
Make time for yourself
It is like car race on track, going into pit stop for awhile makes you better. In life once in a while we need to have some ‘me’ time where you can calm, de-stress relax and reflect. Taking a little time for yourself refreshes and re-energises you. It allows you to think more clearly and make better decisions. It also builds your self-esteem over time, as you come to realise that you are important and deserve to have a little time to yourself.
Avoid Distractions
Know what is good and beneficial for you. There are many things that can be a distraction rather that helping you managing and performing is career and DBA. Most of the time we as human being will try to justify why you need to do certain things. Sometimes it is not the things that benefit you. Alway know and remember why you are doing things will help you to recognise, things comes to you it is a distraction or will it help you achieving your grand plan.
Take Care Of Your Health
As you busy with career and DBA life, taking care o your help is super important. Getting sick will have impact and derailed your plan. It will disturb the balancing of career and study.
Keep an updated schedule
Keep an updated schedule of all things. As there are a lot of things that need to be done, having an updated schedule helps you organising your to do and thought process. This also help is managing procrastination as you can always refer to your calendar the list of things that you need to do and when.
Remember why you’re doing it
Always remember why you’re doing the DBA. People have different reason when embarking on this DBA journey. Especially for those that is working full-time or running a business, enrolling into DBA is a choice. It is an adventure and it is not easy. Whatever reason that you have in starting the journey, remember it and it can motivates you to keep going.
Prioritise!
Prioritisation is crucial. With a lot of things to do in balancing the career and DBA life, the key is prioritise. Taking into consideration all the impact, prioritise your daily life.
Cool tools that can help you
Calendar
Calendar app can help you in keeping an updated calendar all the time. One of key tips in choosing the calendar app is how easy to update and access the information.
Google Calendar
Outlook Calendar
Any.do
This app create one unified place for your tasks, goals, reminders, and schedule. A rich variety of reminders help you stay on top of your agenda, to-do, and goals.
Notes Taking Tool
Notes app is another app that I believe can help you in balancing career and DBA. With a good notes taking practice you can makes and refer to note anytime you need to. These are some of my favourite notes taking tool.
Evernote
One Note
Task / Project Management
Clickup
Asana
Trello
SO…
If you up for this challenge of be in a DBA adventure, Azman Hashim International Business School (AHIBS) at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia KL offering a DBA program that is working very closely with the industry. Do visit AHIBS website at https://business.utm.my.