There are people who literally cannot start a project until the deadline is four hours away, even if it's a big one. And those people have a serious problem. My recommendation is set up mini-deadlines. You might say, 'Okay, here's my deadline after three days for this and there's another deadline for that and then a third deadline.

No matter what your career aspirations are, you should begin by thinking carefully about why you are engaging in any activity and what you can expect to get out of it.

The most important thing is to talk to people that have jobs that you might like and to see what they say the job involves.

If you want an active schedule, you have to husband your time so you can act on the things that are important.

From the law firm's perspective, billing by the hour has a certain appeal: it shifts risk from the firm to the client in case the work takes longer than expected. But from a client's perspective, it doesn't work so well. It gives lawyers an incentive to overstaff and to overresearch cases.

Routinize the routine. The things that aren't important to you, whether it's breakfast or your commute, try to do them with the least energy possible so that leaves you with more energy for other things.

You need to agree with your boss about what you need to get done that week, what are the metrics of success. Sometimes you need more hours, sometimes you need fewer hours.