Study Hacks has an interesting post on Time Arbitrage for students - he plays off of Tim Ferriss’ (of the 4-Hour Workweek) and Keith Ferrazzi’s (of Never Eat Alone) ideas on how to make the most out of your money or social network and applies it to the ways students spend their time. His basic argument is that your time earlier in the day is more valuable for real work (doing homework) because you have more energy and a clearer head and that your time in the evening is more valuable for relaxation (socializing), yet most of us, including yours truly, are guilty of not making the best use of our time - doing silly things like homework or writing blog posts late at night.
I think he has a very good point, and I am definitely going to think about how best to spend my time in the future. I think I do a pretty good job as it stands, but there is always room for improvement. One example of that was the other night, I was working on homework, but I was exhausted, so it was a matter of getting diminishing returns - I was getting less and less work done per unit of time, so rather than waste that time, I got the most value out of it that I could. I went to bed, and got up the next morning and completed the assignment with a clear head.
I wonder how I should reconcile this idea of getting maximal value out of time by doing the hardcore work early in the day with the reality that I get up pretty early as it is, so I can catch the bus to go to work at my job. Free time in the morning is a luxury I rarely have, so am I wasting my most productive hours as a student by working early in the day? (Note: A question like this goes back to a bigger question of value and time - How much is my time worth? Your Money or Your Life is a good book for more thoughts on this)
Here is the original post: Time Arbitrage to Maximize Your Productivity Profit
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