Time Management 101

Here’s some good advice from psychologist and behavioral economist Dan Ariely.

Ariely notes that our brains, such as they are, work best immediately after we awake in the morning.  This burst of productivity lasts for around two hours. If you want to be more successful and to work more effectively, you should use those two hours to tackle difficult tasks. You should not waste them by lounging around and dawdling your way through social media.

As Ariely explains:

One of the saddest mistakes in time management is the propensity of people to spend the two most productive hours of their day on things that don't require high cognitive capacity (like social media). If we could salvage those precious hours, most of us would be much more successful in accomplishing what we truly want. 

How do you master this skill? Melissa Dahl recommends this:

One way to fight against this tendency is to decide the night before what you want to accomplish in the morning, so you can jump right into your day. There is a time for mindlessness, but maybe save it for later.