How to Thrive: Homeschooling + Flexible Schedule

Homeschooling and taking classes online, often means that there is more flexibility in your schedule than if you were attending traditional in person school.

Flexibility is great, however, it can also cause you to fall behind and become frustrated if you don’t have a plan. It’s important that a flexible schedule doesn’t become replaced with a procrastination schedule. Flexibility is about working and learning when it works for you, and it usually means that you need to spend some time learning everyday.

For example, I have a flexible schedule, which often means that I take a walk or go outside around 3pm, as that’s a time of day where I tend to feel tired. Instead of pushing through and trying to work, I take a break. It doesn’t mean that I don’t do any work for days on end, and then try to cram everything into one day, because that doesn’t work.

How do you make a flexible schedule/flexible learning work for you?

1. Make a schedule each week. The flexibility is that it is a schedule that you’re creating, not that someone else is giving to you. When you do it on a weekly basis, you can also make adjustments from week to week.
2. Understand how long it takes to do things. Being good at estimating time for projects is a skill and something that you’ll learn over time if you’re intentional about it. As you’re learning, make sure that you don’t pack your schedule so full that there is no room for error, that will lead to overwhelm. Create a schedule that has space for surprise events and that allows for some projects or assignments to take longer than planned.
3. Break things down. If you have a self portrait due in a week, you don’t want to just write, finish self portrait, as that often leads to cramming. Break it down. This makes it easier to think about when you’ll do it and you’ll get a closer estimate of time. Once you see your list like below, you can see that you may need to do a few things each day in order to complete the assignment on time. Here’s an example:
   • Take 50 self portraits (photos)
   • Review and edit photos, select the 3 that you like the most to use for a reference
   • Collect your materials
   • Create 3-5 sketches as you think about composition and work out the details of the portrait
   • draft your first sketch on your final canvas or piece of paper
   • add shading
   • add additional details
   • final touches
   • photograph
4. Set a timer for things that you’re putting off. Even if you’re excited about the class, you will likely have assignments or parts of assignments that you put off. They might feel too hard or not spark your interest. Often, getting started is the hardest part. Set a timer for 30 minutes and commit to being focused on the task at hand, you’ll be surprised about how much you can finish.
5. Ask questions. Learning online usually means that there isn’t always a teacher in front of you, so you might feel like you can’t ask questions. It will vary from class to class, but in my classes, it’s set up so that students can ask me questions as well as so that other students can chime in help. Your classmates, even if you’ve never met them before, are often a great resource.