Dear 1L: Streamline Your Meals to Maximize Productivity

Dear 1L, This may sound silly, but one thing I did during 1L weekdays that really helped me was to eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch each day, at roughly the same time each day.

During those time-blocks, I sat alone and did my reading for the classes coming up later that same day.

A hum-drum culinary & antisocial existence? Perhaps.

But a small, short-term sacrifice. (And I more than made up for it on weekends.)

By making this sacrifice, moreover, I accomplished two key things.

1️⃣ First, I eliminated 2 daily decisions.

Over the course of the academic year, that was 10 decisions per week and more than 100 decisions per semester.

Decision-fatigue is real.

The fewer decisions you have to make—even about small things—will conserve precious energy needed for focus.

And when you’re a 1L, every energy source counts.

How is your energy level this semester? I bet you don’t have an ounce to spare. Why include more than 100 daily decisions to make?

2️⃣ Second, my monastic meal plan meant I got my readings done early in the day.

Because I, like most, tend to focus better earlier in the day, and because less distractions interfere then (especially at breakfast time), I had greater ability to extract the important points from the reading quickly.

I avoided getting bogged down in the slow, word-for-word reading I typically resorted to at night.

I thus read much faster when I did it early in the day.

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So consider streamlining your daily meal time:

Even if you’re not someone who succumbs to internal morality debates about what you “should” eat at any given meal (😔), you can see benefits from removing what-to-eat decisions & using that time productively.

The above takes discipline, but you only have 3 months until exams. Might be a sacrifice to consider making?

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What miscellaneous habits have you formed to help you free up energy during periods that call for maximum productivity?

Fondly,
💌 Amanda