How to advance in leagues while still having a life

When leagues start for the week, don't play any rated games. Keep doing this until just before the one week window runs out (maybe one day before it ends, or maybe even one hour)

Then, start playing games. You will be placed in a division that hasn't filled up yet, meaning that it will consist of players who also haven't played during the rest of the week (there are way more than 50 players on chess.com). It seems like chess.com takes the first 50 players who play a game and puts them in one division. Then the site takes the next 50 players, and so on. This means you only need to grind for a few hours in order to advance

Why I think this strategy works: After reopening my account, I played a game on this site for the first time in the past two weeks. Now I have just 27 points, and even though leagues started a full five days ago, I am ranked #6 in the Stone League (yes, I'm still in Stone). All players in my division played zero games this week apart from today. Earlier, I had 284 points yet only ranked #27

Good advice

This works in general

But if the division that you move to doesn't fill up in time then that's a big oof

As long as you don't join with 2 minutes left, the division should fill up soon, assuming you're not in the highest one or two divisions, which have fewer players