Balancing Skating and School
What is one thing that you think you could improve on? If you're like me, you might've said something along the lines of "time management" or "balancing different commitments". As figure skaters, we can often feel stretched too thin between skating, school, and our other responsibilities. This is totally normal! Skating can be very demanding in terms of practice time. In the years I've been skating, I've definitely improved on my time management and organizational skills a lot. What I've learned is that there is no clear schedule or rules that will work for everyone, because everyone’s loads are different. One person may not even have the same load throughout the year. But I’ve learned three pillars that I have structured my skating and school around: time blocking, prioritization, and efficiency.
Time Blocking
If you don't already, consider planning out your week ahead of time! Set aside specific blocks of time for the work you are planning to do. I'm sure this is one of the productivity tips we've all heard, and it definitely works. Personally, I use Google Calendar, but other great options are weekly/daily planners, Notion, or just a regular notebook! Try out different methods to find out what works for you.
A lot of people who schedule their time only mark the time they are actively busy. However, I would recommend blocking out the time it takes to completely finish an activity. For example, if you plan to skate for an hour and a half, but it takes 10 minutes to warm up, 10 minutes to drive to the rink, and 10 minutes to get back, consider blocking out that time as two hours for skating. This way, you can visualize your time. With time blocking, you can see that twenty minutes before the session starts is not free time. Similarly, you can do this for schoolwork. You might schedule a specific hour just to study for history, or an hour to write an English paper, and know that once the hour is up you are going to stop working.
This method also helps to fight burnout. When you can see what time you're working, you can also set aside break times for rest and recovery.
Prioritization
It's important to know your priorities. How do you rank your commitments? Do you consider skating more important, or does school come first? If I consider skating more important, I might arrange my schedule around when I skate to allow myself to skate more at times when the rink is emptier. If school is more important to you, try figuring out what times you're most focused while studying and make sure you're not busy at that time so you can work on homework.
If you're thinking well, how do I know what matters the most to me? I care equally about both! Don't worry, this is totally normal! Prioritizing is not as easy as it sounds. You can definitely care about both as long as you are scheduling both equally. Keep in mind when prioritizing that you don't have to find some permanent schedule that will always work. Priorities change. Sometimes they will change year to year, season to season, month to month, even just week to week. Consider these questions to determine your priorities:
Do you have competitions, tests, and/or other major events coming up? Maybe you have an important English paper due in a few days, or a competition in a few weeks. In these situations, priorities change.
Could you see yourself following through this throughout the years? If you can't decide what is important now, what do you think will be important to you later?
Can you schedule the two equally? Consider having days where you schedule skating before work times, and vice versa.
Efficiency
As always, quality over quantity! Even if you don't have time to practice for hours on end every day, an effective hour can mean more than hours spent doing nothing. As students, our days are often busy, which means it can be incredibly difficult to find long periods of time to skate. Not everyone is free for many hours after school, or has transportation to skate in the mornings. But if you are able to squeeze in a little period of time on or off the ice, take the best advantage of it. This applies for schoolwork too!
Takeaway
Skating is a very challenging sport to balance with school. If you feel like you are struggling to manage, you are not alone! By following these principles, you can absolutely improve your scheduling skills.