So...

I've been meaning to start a blog for a month or so, and just never had the time due to an overwhelming amount of schoolwork. I was getting on average 5hours of sleep a night and barely had time to relax. 7 out of the 9 days of reading week were spent entirely on studying! I'm wondering though if that is because I'm simply inefficient or because there really was that much work to be done.

My hunch is that it's both. My CSC301 (Introduction to Software Engineering) professor, Greg Wilson, had us read an article on how cramming in work just doesn't work. Sleeping less and working more only made people make more mistakes, and more mistakes meant more time fixing them. According to the article, a 40hr week is ideal in terms of productivity. In the past couple months, as well as the entire last term, I've probably been clocking in nearly 1.5 to 2 times as much (albeit with breaks a.k.a. distractions such as chatting, email, and SNS sites).

Looking back, I can see some of the "stupid" mistakes and decisions made that I probably wouldn't have had I not been as tired or stressed out. When I first read the article, I promised myself to get at least 6 hours of sleep a night, because last term, I was getting less than 4, and my grades suffered the toll. People not getting enough sleep are as good as drunk. The scary part is though, that they're not aware of it, thinking they're fully capable of making the right decisions. I suppose going from less than 4 to an average of 5 is an improvement, but still not enough. It's hard to break habits, and one of my weaknesses is that once something is on my mind, it'll keep bothering me until I figure it out. This explains a lot of late nights spent debugging, or being stuck on one problem. Believe it or not, I am learning to do that less, and hopefully I'll achieve my 6 hour goal soon. I just need to convince myself that one more hour of late-night debugging is worth less than one hour of sleep. Or maybe I just need to cut down on distractions...