Do the least pleasant tasks first. While fresh, you can sizzle with the highest powers of concentration at your disposal. Do the most critical and deep background concepts early before moving onto easier (less challenging) but necessary grinding out of details. If you do the easier tasks first, you will be thinking about and stressing about the harder ones the whole time, reducing your productivity and ability to focus.

That being said, avoid bogging yourself down when reading, or getting stuck and defeated on difficult problems or essay questions. Sometimes the least desirable part of an assignment may be too time-consuming and it could drain/kill all your available time. So try to limit your time and self-supervise to move on to easier matters, if absolutely necessary.

I have to say goodbye to ScienceNet before I have break time to amuse myself.