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<li>Strictly limit working hours. Maybe the above advice is too abstract for you. I have a simple heuristic which fits into it but doesn’t require thinking of yourself as two people.</li>
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<p>Remember the person I described at the start of #17? A specific problem that inefficient people often have is that they think the trick to success and efficiency is to limit resting time, whereas the real secret is to limit working time. Strictly.</p>
<p>Make it illegal for yourself to work or think about work during a certain substantial chunk of each day. After you’ve spent some time adjusting to Tech, make a permanent rule that any work you get done has to get done, say, between the hours of 10 am and 8 pm daily (adjust based on your personal time preferences). Since you will treasure your scarce working time, you won’t waste it.</p>
<p>If you feel like you should always be working or trying to, there is nothing to be gained from working harder or better. No matter what you do, you’ll always be working. On the other hand, if the cost of inefficiency is failure, (or at least breaking a personal rule about your time off each day), you will be less likely to waste it.</p>
<p>This advice is NOT the same as saying that you should do a typical Techer thing: wake up at noon and think about how you have a set due tomorrow. Surf the web and lazily go to a few classes, thinking about how you should really be getting started. Look at a few problems and think about how you should start on them. Finally start in earnest at 11 P.M. and work until 6 A.M. to get the set done. </p>
<p>You might say, “Gee, this guy took noon to 11 off and then worked for seven solid hours. Great!”</p>
<p>No. Rest only works if it’s guilt-free. If you are “resting” by procrastinating and thinking about how you should start the work, you will get neither the benefits of rest nor the benefits of work. This is the point of deciding in advance when your rest and work will take place. Then the rest will be guilt-free and actually useful; the work will have to be efficient if it is to get done in its allotted time.</p>
<p>A few disclaimers. Obviously, all rules must be bent every now and then in unusual circumstances. That doesn’t mean they’re not generally good rules. Also, some of the most successful students at Tech sometimes or always do almost the exact opposite of what I am proposing. Different strokes for different folks, but I thought I’d share something that has worked quite well for me.</p>