Time management can be tough. What is urgent in your life and what is important to your life are often very different things:

• going to the gym today isn't urgent, but it is important for your long–term health.
• eating real, unprocessed foods isn't required for you to stay alive right now but will reduce your risk of cancer and disease.

Examples of half-work:

• You start writing a report but stop randomly to check your phone for no reason or to open up Facebook or Twitter.
• You try out a new workout routine. Two days later, you read about another “new” fitness program and try a little bit of that. You make little progress in either program and so you start searching for something better.
• Your mind wanders to your email inbox while you're on the phone with someone.

Decisions and choices that you make throughout the day tend to drain your willpower. You're less likely to make a good decision at the end of the day than you are at the beginning.

If you do the most important thing first, then you’ll never have a day when you didn’t get something important done.

For example, you decide to run 3 miles in the afternoon, but during the day your schedule got crazy and now you only have 20 minutes to workout.

If you reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule, instead of running 3 miles, you run 1 mile or do five sprints or 30 jumping jacks. You get a workout in no matter what.