The eternal battle

I managed to get some fitness done today. For the first time in probably a month and a half. I have lost track. Actually, I don't have time for fitness, but around here time is not something you have, it is something you take. The recent MBAT tournament made it clear to me how much I need to get started on the physical exercise again. My body clearly does not like what it has been exposed to the past four months. Something needs to change, but what? What do I cut away to give time for more exercise?

Sleep? No, that is already at a minimum. I think most of us in the beginning thought we just could cut sleep to almost nothing. That worked only for a few days. Perhaps a few weeks for some. But eventually it catches up with you. It hits you like hammer and you find yourself unable to function in the class and in the study room. You change the strategy and start allocating yourself a minimum amount of sleep every night, a deadline where you HAVE to go to bed whether you are ready or not. That works. Sometimes, at least.

Well, if you cannot increase the number of hours your can work every day, perhaps you can reduce the amount things you do. So you start chopping away from the bottom of the list. This is where the least important things are. You make sure that Skype and Messenger does not open automatically on your computer. That way YOU are in charge of when you can be contacted and you do not get caught in random chats. You cut Facebook usage to a bare minimum and you cut all notifications and subscriptions unless they are crucial to your future.

You stop all the friendly one-on-one emails correspondences and switch to one-way mass communication, either through emails or a blog. You fear that everybody thinks you are too full of yourself when communicating that way, but to your surprise friends and family fully understands what you are going through and appreciate whatever updates they get.

You reduce your grocery shopping to once a week or you buy it online to save time. You start eating bread and coldcuts in the evening so you don't have to spend time cooking. You anyway get the warm meal in the IMD restaurant at lunch.

You can also cut the work you do for you group to a minimum, but that would be very short sighted. You could do the opposite and do a lot of work for the group or even for the class as a whole, but that comes at the price of your individual preparation for class. Not only does that mean risking to fail the exams, it also means loosing a lifetime opportunity to get some real world class knowledge into your head.

Eventually, you have cut everything to a bare minimum. That helps for a little while. Then the school turns the heat up a bit more and you find yourself scrambling again.

OK, so you cannot extend the number of working hours or reduce the amount of work anymore. Well, then productivity has to go up. Although you can walk to the school in 7 minutes, you start biking so you can do it in 2. You set up automatic labeling and filing systems on your mail, so you can flip through it faster. You set up mails on your phone, so you can handle them whenever you may have a spare moment during the day. You try to become more disciplined in always doing the most important things first (instead of doing the things you like the best).

You then discover that you now are so efficient that you barely have time to talk to your classmates. That does not fly either, so you remind yourself not to forget why you are here. Don't loose this unique chance to get to know all these interesting people. So what do we cut then? Exercise?

And so the story goes. Around and around. Constantly challenging your own priorities, borders and discipline. And that is probably the most central piece of learning this year.

It is now 1:30 and I still have two cases to read. I promised myself I would be in bed by 2:00, so I can function properly tomorrow. So do I increase the work hours, reduce the work load or increase productivtivity?

Thorsten