Time management

I heard a lot of people say that time management is the most important thing in a B school and being in one, I thought I should perhaps try figuring this one out in more detail. Lets start with the specifics and list down how a student should go about allocating his/her time in a day.

1. Case prep- This would take 6 hours for a 3 case day and 4 hours for a 2 case day (as recommended). Lets assume on average 5 hours per day

2. Classes- 5 hours per day

3. Sleep- as this is important in order to stay human and not become a zombie- lets say 5 hours per day

4. Learning team (study group)- 1 hour per day

5. Gym – 1 hour per day

6. club activities- Assuming an average of 5 clubs per student and one weekday per club- 1.5 hour per day

7. Recruiting activities- includes industry weeks, resume tips, networking with recruiters etc- 7-10 hours per week or roughly around 1.5 hours per day

8 Guest lectures/speaker series – 1 hour per day

9 Power nap in the afternoon- 0.75 hours per day

10. Section events (drinks/parties/movie nights etc)- 2 hours per day

If you add up all the times , it comes to around 25 hours and in this I have not included time for personal hygiene, phone conversations/ skype/ laundry etc.

Every time I think that I have not managed my time well, I find myself revisiting the list above and wondering where the hell should I save time. Should i not spend as much time on the cases ? or should i sleep for fewer than 5 hours? or should i stop going out for section events?

After a month at HBS, I am still wondering.

Update (week3)

Its been 3 weeks at HBS and I have the following updates. Due to lack of time, I am going to simply list them and go over the details hopefully later-

1. I am in Section A (Go A!) and last week we had a hand off roast by the EC students of old A (as the last years Section is called). They managed to get quite a lot of info about us from facebook etc and some of my section mates were badly roasted. Overall it was fun though and I enjoyed it.

2. I have the following subjects in Term 1- Leadership and organizational behavior , Technology and operations management, Finance 1, Accounting and Marketing.

3. The enthusiasm of the professors here is really contagious. Sometimes their sheer presence in the classroom is enough to get everyone interested.

4. I have joined a total of 5 clubs. I hope I will be able to do justice to all of them.

5. The career development office has already started sending us feelers about resumes and companies and recruiting policies and the general trend due to the bad economy etc.

6. I was wary of typical HBS students being very aggressive and bar hopping every day and while there are students like that who get all the press here, there is also a vast majority of students who have varied interests and I enjoy talking to all these people over lunch and dinner.

7. We are on our section retreat this weekend. Its a 3 hour drive to a place called jiminy creek and almost the whole of our section is going. It should be fun.