I've been going down the rabbit hole of "productivity" (very unproductively, I might add) and I wonder how do other math PhD students schedule their day. Let's drop tips, ideas, anything from personal experience or suggestions you've got yourself.
I'd be happy to hear anything: scheduling during semester, between semesters, how teaching goes into it, etc. It's also open to Masters students or whatever other advanced degrees you've got in your country, I'm just looking for math students specifically because I feel like we are compared to other exact sciences but our research is completely different (no lab work and such).
Here's what I've found for myself already:
working in blocks: It's best to choose in advance the task/goal I want to accomplish and then work on it for a set amount of time with a short break afterwards. The classical pomodoro technique calls for 25 minutes with 5 minutes break, I think it's too short for most tasks. If I'm sitting on some lemma or reading some paper, 25 minutes might fly by without noticing. Currently I'm working in 90 minutes long blocks. I think pomodoro might be better for something like grading assignments or exams, where I'm doing something repetitive and I need more frequent breaks so I won't lose my mind.
I need to start early. I have a tendency to start my workday later and staying at the office after 20:00 and it's just not productive. It's best if I get to the office early enough to get 2 work blocks before lunch.
In a day I might get only 3 work blocks, that is, 4.5 hours of good quality work (if I'm doing something mundane like answering emails I'll just do it without setting time inside a work block). Other days I get 4 work blocks, but sometimes the last block is a stretch and I'm not as fruitful in that block. The fourth block is good for certain "easier" tasks while hard thinking is better pushed to the first block of the next day
If I go for a very long work day, say 12 hours, I'll obviously get more done, but I think it ruins the day afterwards. I need time for hobbies, physical activities, relaxation, etc.
I haven't really experimented with that during the semester, where I think classes, teaching workload and such will make it harder to schedule 90 minutes work blocks.