Anyone doing a part-time PhD out there? How do you divide your time?

[Minceybits]

I have two DD (one primary, one secondary), a two day a week freelance contract and am studying part time for a PhD. Is anyone doing anything similar? I can't work out how to organise my life!

How do you schedule your time? How much do you work while kids are around? How much time to you spend on house work/family admin? Do you work at weekends?

[japanesegarden]

I've just finished a part time MA and am about to start a PhD. I did the MA while working about 12 hours a week on something else, caring for my mother, and dealing with two adult/near adult children. It was hard. The two things I didn't do much of were housework/family admin and seeing friends. I do academic work most evenings and certainly part of every weekend, as well as quite a bit during the day. I love it, but it certainly does take a lot of time (this is humanities); I find I have to just accept that there will be times near deadlines where it dominates everything, and times when I can let it slip a bit and do other stuff. HTH.

[Minceybits]

I'm humanities too, but I find it really hard to work in the evenings - it's 9:30 by the time I can sit down properly most nights and I just want to go to bed! Oddly I often get more work done when the kids get home from school, but that's only and hour or so before I have to start on supper.
Anyway thanks, I just need someone to come round and tell me to get off MN and get on with it!

[mrsmortis]

I'm currently doing a distance learning MBA. While working full time. DH is a stay at home dad while working towards a second bachelors.

I'm lucky because I travel a lot for work. I actually get the most done while on trains and planes or in hotels because there are no distractions. This is often 2 hours a day on a week day!

The fact that my DH is studying helps too. There are quite a few evenings where you'll find us sitting together each with our books open working on our various projects. That sort of mutual support is great.

The other thing that I have learnt is that I need to give myself small targets. I write a weekly to do list with tasks in that take no more than a couple of hours, smaller if I can manage it.

I'm like the previous poster, I find it really hard to have the energy to pick things up after the kids are in bed. So this generally only happens when there is a deadline looming...