When I began working 8-hour days and studying for university at the same time, I quickly realized, 'Holy [ __ ]! When am I going to have time to go to the gym?' It felt like there just weren't enough hours in the day. I would wake up and go

straight to work, come home, then study for assignments or exams at university. And by the time I'd done that, I just felt so drained that there was absolutely no chance I was going to the gym during that period. My fitness suffered; I got fatter and felt pretty

lackluster. Fast forward to now: I manage to train twice per day. I feel and look the best I ever have in my life, and that's all while being the busiest I've ever been at both work and university. So if you're struggling to find balance,

here's how to do it: You've got to be efficient with your time. Now that might sound obvious, but here are some practical things that you can do to be more efficient with how you're using your time. First, make a timetable for your life and do an audit

of how you're spending your days and weeks. When you're creating your timetable, map out when you're at work, when you have class for university, when you'll be studying, and all the other commitments that you have. So, for example, you might be working from 9:00 to 5:00 on

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and then on Wednesday and Friday you're at university. And after you've plugged all your other commitments into a weekly timetable (which I've linked in the description below, and you can create your own timetable there), you'll most likely find that you have an abundance

of time during your week, and if you still think that you're too busy and don't have enough time to fit in exercise, I'll ask you this: what is your daily screen time on your phone? Chances are it's probably something like 3 to 4

hours; it might even be higher than that. So you've clearly got time available; it's just that you're not spending it wisely right now. I'm working full-time, and I can fit in two workouts into my days, and that's with a screen time of

about 2 to 3 hours on average every day. So trust me, you've probably got time. Then, after you've plugged in all your commitments throughout the weekly timetable, you can find slots that are free where you can fit in a gym session or other exercise. You might also want to

put in time for free time or relaxation; that's completely fine. Once you've done that, try and stick to the timetable. Just having it in a place that's really visible for you makes it more likely that you're going to stick to that timetable. For me, I've got it hanging

right above my desk, and so when I see it every day, it makes me so much more likely to stick to what I've got scheduled in my timetable. But don't beat yourself up over it if you slightly deviate from it from time to time;

it's not the end of the world. Chances are, if you make your ideal timetable, even if you stuck to it only 50% of the time, you'd still be making huge amounts of progress. The second thing you can do is wake up early. Now, I know a lot of you

I'll say, oh, but my genotype is that I'm just someone who goes to sleep late and wakes up late, so I can't wake up early. To be honest, I used to think the exact same thing when I was in high school. On school holidays, I would

go to sleep at like 2:00 a.m. and then wake up at like 2:00 p.m. or 3:00 p.m., which is just absurd. And now I go to sleep at around 8:00 or 9:00 p.m. and wake up at about

5:00 or 6:00 a.m. So it is possible to change your sleep routine. The reason why waking up early is so beneficial is because if you wake up at a time when you go straight to work or straight to university, you're only going to have

time to go to the gym after doing that activity, and you might be spending 8, 9, 10 hours at work or at uni. So after you've finished, you're going to be drained of energy. You've used all your willpower on work rather than dedicating

it to exercise. And that's why I think so many people skip the gym sessions that they plan for themselves, because they'll finish whatever they've been doing throughout the day and just feel so tired at the end of it, so they skip the session. Whereas when you

wake up early at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., and you've got that time before you have to commit to going to work or going to uni, you're at a point where you've got 100% of your willpower and your energy to spend. So,

You're all the more likely to go to the gym and hit that workout if you've just woken up, and that's when your battery is 100% charged. So if you wake up early and put your gym sessions in the morning before doing any work, you're going to be

all the more likely to stick to doing those sessions. And I know a lot of people hate the thought of having to wake up early at 4:00, 5:00, or 6:00. And look, in an ideal world, you could wake up at 9:00 a.m., go to the gym first, and

then begin working at, say, 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning. But unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world, and our society kind of works off this 9-to-5 time slot. So work will begin at 9:00; uni or

classes will also begin at 9:00. So really, the only solution is to wake up early. My third point on being efficient with your time is utilizing the weekend. As you know, on the weekends you don't have to work—at least, hopefully you don't have

to work—so you've kind of got unlimited time to do whatever you want. And the weekends are where you can fit in all of your exercise, and you're not constrained by time. If you want to go to the gym five times per week, you can go twice on

the weekend and be completely unconstrained in terms of time. And that means you only have to go three times throughout the week where you have less time because you're working or you're studying. If you want to fit two workouts in, you can easily do that on the

Saturday or Sunday as well, because, as I say, you've got unlimited time. But the fatal mistake that everyone makes is going out every Friday night, every Saturday night. Because of all the drinking and partying people do on the weekend, they'll

wake up the next day and feel a lack of energy, feel unmotivated, and that leads to them not doing anything over the weekend. When in reality, the weekend is where you've got the most time to do things that are going to progress you toward

your goals. And this is not me saying that you're not allowed to have a life outside of exercising and work. Of course, by all means, every now and again you can go out and hang out with your friends, have a drink, have a cheat meal, or do

whatever it is that brings joy to your life. But where people shoot themselves in the foot is by going out week after week, day after day, and it just hampers their energy levels, willpower, and ultimately their progress in the gym and in working out. You simply have to

limit how much you're doing that kind of thing if you truly want to achieve your goals in the gym, achieve an aesthetic physique, feel healthy, and feel fit. So many people will say, "Oh, well, I'm just not going to have a life outside of working out." If this is the life that you

commit to, that's simply just not true. Yes, you're going to be busy because you're fitting so much into your days, but that doesn't mean you don't have a life. The fact that you're probably watching Netflix most days or scrolling through TikTok or whatever it is means

that you've got time to socialize, or see friends, or do whatever else it is that brings you joy. You just need to be extremely disciplined when it comes to time management, and that comes from just cutting out a lot of the unnecessary things that

you do day-to-day. And look, it's something that I am also still struggling to get the hang of. So having the timetable and mapping out how you're going to spend your time over the week is all great and nice, but what happens when the alarm goes off at

5:00 in the morning and you just don't want to get out of bed? It's all a mental challenge, and the skill that will allow you to stick to your timetable more effectively is discipline. Discipline is something that can be developed over time, but the reality is that the

skill of discipline can only be developed by being disciplined. The more you're disciplined, the more likely in the future you're going to become disciplined. Now that might sound confusing, but every time you feel some kind of friction between you and doing something that's uncomfortable, like

waking up early and going to the gym, you've got to just override your brain in that moment and just do it anyway. And if you do it on one day, it means you're more likely to do it the next day and the next day, and in the weeks and months

following that. It also comes back to having a reason to wake up early and do the things that you want to do. Fitness, having an aesthetic body and feeling fit are things that are simply too valuable for me to not wake up early and go to the gym for. I just simply can't

sacrificing being healthy and being fit for an extra couple of hours of scrolling TikTok or watching Netflix, or a couple of extra hours of unnecessary sleep. So that's what gets me out of bed to this day. My brain still has internal dialogue where I'll wake up at

5:00 and I'll have the thought of, "Oh, don't go to the gym today; you're too sore." But I'll end up going to the gym anyway and hitting PBs on multiple exercises. You've really just got to override your brain in those

circumstances. One thing that I will get behind is printing off a habit tracker where you can tick off all the habits that you want to do on a given day. When you've got that habit tracker stuck up in your room somewhere where it's really

visible for you, it's a glaring reminder when you haven't been able to tick something off for the day—that you've been lazy. And again, because it's just there and a constant reminder to yourself, you're more likely to stick to that habit. That leads me to my next point on

burnout. When you're doing all of this stuff and you're extremely busy, it can be very easy to burn out. When you're at the point of severely sacrificing your sleep just to be able to fit in another workout for consecutive days or weeks in

a row, that's when I think you're teetering on the edge of self-implosion. If you're staying up till midnight because of work or for study and you've got to be up the next day at 5:00 in the morning to go to the gym,

Sometimes it's okay to just cope with that four- or five-hour sleep and go to the gym anyway, but when you're doing it consistently, you're on a sure road to becoming subhuman and burning out. If you're in a stage of your life where

you're just extremely busy, I think sacrificing a workout here and there is okay to make sure that your foundational health remains intact. You've got to remain cognizant of the signs that you might be withering away, and when you recognize that, perhaps it's time to just

ease off, give yourself a bit more time to sleep and recover. But I will say it is very easy for your brain to let you think that you're burnt out and skip a workout when you're really not. The other night I had 4 1/2 hours of sleep and

I went to the gym and performed just fine; my strength was all still there. And look, I don't say that I had 4 hours of sleep as a flex; I think sleep is extremely important, and getting only 4 hours of sleep is so grim. But every now

and again it can be okay. When you're doing it consecutively over days and weeks, that's when it becomes an issue, and I think your foundational health is at risk in those circumstances. So hopefully you enjoyed this video, or perhaps learned something from it that

you can implement into your own life. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing because we are getting to 4,000 subscribers soon. And as always, leave a like, leave a comment, and let me know whether you're balancing any competing interests with the gym right now. That's

How To Balance Lifting With Full-Time Work/Study

Chris H

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