balancing work & study life

Hi @msk29,

Well, it is not easy to juggle work and studies alongside other commitments like friends and family. Due to the time constraint giving sufficient time for preparation gets really difficult.
Honestly, I think those who are doing their best to cope with all these commitments are actually praiseworthy.

The best advice I can give to you for creating a good balance between work and studies is TIME MANAGEMENT. That really is the key! Make a plan and stick to it.

One needs to develop a DO IT NOW attitude and not procrastinate anything. And for this you should be focused. All distractions must be avoided. The biggest, your phone, must be kept aside while studying. When it’s time to study, we study.

Also, to have a strong determination and will. If you have decided that you need to be ACCA qualified then you need to give it all so that you make that happen.

Basically, with the right technique and attitude work/study balance can be possible.

Now in terms of study timing and hours, it is best to go with the recommended preparation time given by ACCA in the Study Support Guide.

With work it could be the difficult to study during the weekdays but even if one is able to give 2 hours in the weekdays and study full day during the weekend this should help to cope and prepare well.

So what I recommend is would be maybe during the week days one can give time to learning by watching the lecture videos and reading the OT notes. And over the weekend after a quick recap of what has been done in the week do question practise because one has more time during the weekend.

It is important to utilise whatever time you get efficiently especially during working days. Some of my friends use to take their study materials to their workplace and study during their lunch break.

Now it is up to you whether you want to study before going to work by getting up early (but you need to make sure you sleep early the night before to get sufficient rest) or want to study after coming from work (provided your mind will allow you to feed matter to it!)

Ideally, you would want to complete the learning phase in a bit quicker pace in order to leave you with maximum time for revision and question practise because the more time you give to practising questions the better chances of getting that pass you have.

Once you enter the revision phase, you can simply revise the notes during working days and/or review your answers of the practise questions you have completed; leaving the question practise for the weekends because you will have full day for yourself.

Obviously this is my take on this, each person’s situation is different and so they will have to do this according to their commitments and what suits them best.

Hope this helps.

You are welcome, @msk29. Glad to be of help 🙂

I personally will recommend you to stick to just one paper per sitting as you are working full time.
If at any point you think you are doubtful about that pass, then better to delay that paper.
It is always preferred to delay an exam to the next sitting and give a successful attempt rather than sit unprepared and give an unsuccessful one.
(something, I guess, I missed to mention in the above post).

Don’t worry, you are working hard and hard work surely pays off! Keep doing what you are doing. All the best!