Some of the best (perhaps cliché) advice I've gotten is not to confuse urgency with importance. It's far too easy to constantly be busy and checking things off

Some of the best (perhaps cliché) advice I've gotten is not to confuse urgency with importance. It's far too easy to constantly be busy and checking things off of a list, while letting the really high-leverage things go unaddressed. An antidote I've found is to book big things far out, because then urgency doesn't come into play (I'm not worried about the laundry I need to do in March), and I can make the decision based entirely around "importance". So while it's easy to let a random Saturday slip away to todo list chores, if I purchase plane tickets to Japan for 3 months out, by the time it comes around then I'm definitely getting on the plane, chores be damned.