How To Tetris Your Life If 8 Hours Doesn’t Feel Like Enough In A Day

Lifehacker has teamed up with Victoria University to help you get your life back.

Are you constantly late? Skipping lunch? Not getting sleep? These might be signs that your life is slowly spinning out of control. As you try to slot everything into your schedule – work, study, friends, relationships, gym and family – responsibilities can pile up. It feels like a constant battle to appease everyone and something eventually has to give. If you’re relating hard to this, implement these Tetris-like tactics to level up.

Block out hours of power at work

Usually, people will tell you to just decrease your workload. But sometimes, that’s not possible. Instead, find ways to get through the bottleneck like implementing hours of power. As getting tasks done is hard when you have constant notifications, emails, texts and deadlines.

If you’re studying (or considering it), you can also block out hours of power. One university that has taken this to the next level is Victoria University. They have introduced the VU Block Model ®. A different way of learning where instead of studying four subjects at once, like most universities, you study one subject at a time over four weeks. And get this, there are no lectures. This means you can spend that time catching up on other areas of your life.

Create a calendar with your friends

Getting older usually means getting busier. Friends that I used to see every week, I’m now seeing every month at most. What I find works best is looking at everyone’s schedule’s once a fortnight. Create a synced calendar so you can see each other’s schedules and book fortnightly catch-ups with ease. No more messaging the group chat with no response or finding a time that works for everyone but one person.

You can also add a lunch rota to the calendar. For example, every week my friends and I have lunch in that friend’s area of work. Sometimes people can’t make it, but they can come to the next one.

Apply the seven, seven, seven rule to your relationship

If you’re finding it hard to spend time with your partner, this TikTok hack will help you keep track. It’s called the seven, seven, seven rule. You go on a date every seven days, go on a weekend away every seven weeks and take a vacation together every seven months. If you think that’s too long or too short, you can change it to whichever number suits you best. Or if you’re long distance, change the number to correlate when you have time off.

Scratching your head for date ideas? Here’s an easy way to pick. Find a list of date ideas and write them down on paddle pop sticks, paper or whatever you have on hand. Chuck them in a jar and next time date night rolls around, pick one out of the pile. It’s that easy.

Share a hobby with your family

If your family is busy or long distance, it’s easy to neglect them with everything else going on in your life. But by sharing a hobby, you get to spend time with your family all while doing something you love. If you live near each other, you can learn a sport, go hiking or bake together. Whereas if you’re long distance, you can play online games and discuss books or movies over video call. Either way, you tick off two birds with one stone.

If you’re planning to hit the books, consider checking out Victoria University. With the VU Block Model ®, you can enjoy more flexibility through a focused timetable of three-hour classes, held three days a week. This makes it easier to balance work, family, and everything else that matters in life.