What this Commonwealth scholar has to say about maximising your productivity  

Just some months ago in September 2025, Aafreen Shah completed her second master’s degree. A Commonwealth Scholar from India, she had pursued a Master of Arts in Education and International Development at University College London.  

During her year in the UK, Shah not only focused on her studies but was also the UCL Representative for Commonwealth Scholarship Commission. Maximising her productivity, she was also selected as the representative for all postgraduate funding matters at UCL, acting as the primary liaison between the university’s funding administration and the postgraduate student body. In the background, she has also been an education mentor for Project EduAccess.  

It’s a lot. How does she balance it all?  

Productivity all about organisation  

It might sound like a no brainer, but being organised and having a plan can get you far in life.  

As the saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” 

In the early days of her UCL education, Shah had attended a seminar that featured a panellist who had shared her planner ways.  

Shah already was quite an organised person as well, but the panellist’s advice of planning out her week in advance over the weekend was a great help.  

“Not to be a maniac who absolutely plans every hour of their day or week, but just to have an idea of where you’re going with your week,” she says. “I actually started practising it and I think it blows my mind right now to think that it actually worked so well for me. I was able to do so many things. I travelled a bunch, I met some of the most incredibly brilliant people I did academically quite well in the classrooms.” 

Of course, there were times where she wasn’t able to do everything. Like many other people, stress and pressure would affect her sleep, which in turn interrupted her time management.  

“It’s so important in today’s day and time to sort of really think about how each and everything affects your mental health on a day-to-day basis,” she reminds.  

Shah has worked as an independent consultant for the Government of Delhi’s Delhi Board of School Education to develop Humanities and Social Sciences curriculum. Source: Aafreen Shah

Defeating the impostor in us  

Although it certainly sounds like Shah made the most out of her experience studying in the UK, there is still that FOMO — fear of missing out — that creeps up. Or, more accurately, it’s the fear of not doing enough.  

“If I were to ask myself what I did in my year in London, was it enough? Perhaps instinctively my answer would be yes. The imposter in us might say no. I should have done so much more,” she admits.  

The truth is, it’s impossible to do everything. You have to pick and choose what you think makes most sense to you.  

Planning your week in advance can help you ascertain whether you’re maximising your time, but you have to be realistic about what you can control.  

“There were weeks and days when I was just not able to do those things. Reminding yourself that it’s totally okay to have those weeks as well is completely normal. We are all human,” Shah says.  

There is strength in numbers  

As with most things, the benefit of having a community cannot be overstated.  

“I feel like in a world like ours, where there are more problems than solutions and there always have been historically as well, we need to really come together to make sense of things,” Shah says. “Otherwise I feel like we will rot just thinking about what the problems are. We won’t actually sort of bridge that actionable gap that needs to be bridged.”  

Having that mindset was also what pushed her to network and make the most out of her time abroad. And through those networks, she is better able to gain information and get opportunities.  

“There will always be more problems than solutions, but we need to keep walking a step a day towards making [the world] more habitable,” she says.