Studying on the internet has made it possible for lots of people with other life commitments to get the college education they want to pursue their dreams, such as online business programs that can help people who want to be entrepreneurs or executives, vocational programs for people with a certain field they’d love to work in, and IT courses for those who want a career in tech. People choose online study for a lot of reasons – it can be much cheaper than attending a college, and can also allow them to keep working or stay at home with their family. However, while it does make a good balance between study and other aspects of life more easily achievable, you do need to be able to manage your time well to be able to get the most from your online course while fitting it around your family life.

Here are three rules to try imposing on yourself to help with your time management when you are doing an online business degree or other course with an online university:

‘Book’ Your Study Time

If you make a study schedule (which everybody should), treat those times in your calendar when you are set to study as being times when you are booked up, as if you were at an appointment or working, even if you’ll just be at home. Talk about time that way to friends and family, who may just assume that because you are at home, you are available to chat or do stuff with them.

Your Course Is Never a Low Priority

Even if you are doing your course at your own pace and don’t have to finish in a fixed time, you want to get the benefits of doing it in terms of your career or business idea as soon as you can, right? If so, then you should make it a rule that your course is a priority that you don’t drop just because something else came up. View your scheduled study sessions as just as much ‘hard’ appointments as other things you wouldn’t drop except for in an emergency, like work or attending your child’s big game or dance recital. If you treat it as that important, you should be able to ‘show up’ for each study session you book with yourself and not be tempted by possible alternatives to studying.

You’ll Never Plan All Nighters

A third good rule to adopt is that you will never treat ‘staying up all night’ as an option. While it, of course, is, the idea that you could do, it means you might be tempted to push back other study sessions, or not book in enough of them, thinking you can just work all night closer to that exam or date when your paper is due. Most students have done this, and know how horrible it is, so make it a rule that you will not treat it as an option to stay up all night in the future to avoid doing work immediately.

By following these rules you should have an easier time managing your schedule as an online student.