Asklemmy

Boeing QA department

Might check into hotel reception too. I worked nights at one, and my main duty was making sure the building didn't catch fire or disappear while waiting to do the audit and start morning coffee before I left.

Night time security shifts might work well for this. A buddy mine did that for a while and called it "money detention" for all the activity he did during. I think he mostly read comic books.

I've known people who worked at their school's library and it wasn't only just accepted that they studied while on the job, it was encouraged.

My father told me that he worked on cars in a garage while he was getting his degree. He would stick study material under the cars while he worked on them. He also was able to get away with short naps under there. I doubt that'd work today, but just throwing out something I heard about.

I have an IT position that has an incredible amount of downtime. It's a government org. I read books in between calls. You won't be able to study if you get an IT gig at an MSP (Managed Service Provider). They have lots of clients and the work never ends. You want IT that's in-house.

Good luck!

Computer support helpdesk at a university.

I was grading seed at a grain processing/storage facility for a few years and it had enough down time during the evenings to do any schooling. I managed a full-time pre calculus to shore up my post secondary education requirements. My coworker ended up going back to college for programming and did a lot of his work on the afternoon shift. Our schedule was a 6am-2pm with little down time, and then an afternoon shift from 2pm-10pm with way more free time.

In my case, you didn't have as much down time as some other quieter jobs but they paid ~$30 an hour so there's value if you are looking for some extra cash. No prior experience required.

There was a 12hr night/day rotation for other parts of the facility where you'd swap every few days and get a week off somewhere in the mix but that schedule wasn't for me.

I don't drive so I couldn't confirm my theory, but if you do any jobs where you do a lot of driving around and you have a device that can read your study content to you, I imagine you can study while working because you can double-task while driving long distances.

Data entry is always a good field for this. Work from home (mostly), can figure it out easily, pays decently.

Security guard - with the right post it can be any time, but night shift is your best bet.

Any business where locations exist simply to increase territory/coverage. Here in Canada, this includes certain cannabis retailers, vape shops, certain gas station locations, that kind of thing. Places where the job is clean stuff at a certain cadence, then wait for customers, where customer volume is kinda low. Obv don't rely on these being forever jobs - the cannabis and vape store that fits this will eventually close - but you can get paid to basically study until then.

Well, you can create your own job, if you like. It's not for everyone, but it is flexible -- there's no employer looking to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of your hours. I can describe a little bit what that would look like in case it's helpful.

I think most businesses at their core have one of a limited set of problems. For the people I encounter, it's either content, marketing, sales, or customer service. Even though I operate a tech company, the problem is almost never technology (probably there's a lesson somewhere in that). Sales and customer service often don't leave you much downtime if it's a busy company, so let's ignore them.

Marketing: A lot of businesses just need someone reliable to set up Google Adwords and stuff. You won't make a fortune, but it's easy to learn how to do, and once it's set up there is very little maintenance. We're not talking Coca Cola here -- small businesses that need some help getting local search traffic by paying for search ads. One of my clients just hired someone to do exactly that, who walked into their business and just outright suggested it -- although they've been pretty awful at it to be honest. Anyway, the bar is pretty low and Google wants you to do this so there's tons of learning material out there.

You can identify customers by walking down the street and searching for every small business, and seeing which ones are hard to find.

Content: Businesses that sell online often need a bunch of product photography and website updates that they don't have time to do. Often this is non-technical work -- there's a UI you add the photo and description to, then press 'update'. Often their business profile isn't set up right on google maps and stuff and they need help fixing it.

Content can also be copy writing, video reviews, social content... but honestly I find all of these harder sells than just "your website is out of date, want to pay me a small fee to fix it, then keep it current?".

Put together a list of services and print it out so you look organized. Don't worry about looking like a fool -- it's OK to look like a fool sometimes, as long as you also sometimes succeed.

Try to avoid charging minimum wage. Start with a more moderate cost and work downward if you need to. The customers that pay the least, typically demand the most. I'd structure it as a setup fee and then a fixed amount per month, paid quarterly in advance, for maintenance. Send them a report of what you did every month (google adwords makes this easy).

I've got a couple of people I do this for and I bill 250$ a month, paid quarterly in advance, for 10 hours a month. You might earn less than this at the start and that's OK -- I'm just volunteering a data point. It's not rocket surgery, it's boring stuff, but it keeps my bills paid while I harass bigger clients to pay theirs.

I worked awake overnight shifts in group homes before I got into my current line of work.

Plenty of time to study as the work is a little cleaning, a little paperwork, and some dealing with clients.

Most people just watched TV all night.

my gf works reception at a small local museum and does this, something like that may be viable

If you can get into machining, which is harder to just get in than stay in, a lot of companies I've seen even offer tuition reimbursement for entry machinists to get whatever degree(they want you to get an engineering degree).