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.
Success in almost everything involves time management. It seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything that you need to do accomplished, but if you want to achieve much more than others in a shorter amount of time, you must improve how you manage that time.
Time is our precious resource. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value.
Your “frog” is your most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it.
If you have two important tasks, start your day with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Focus on completing it before you go to the next one.
We tend to confuse activity with accomplishment: we attend endless meetings and make plans, but at the end of the day, no one does the job and gets the results required.
“Failure to execute” is among the biggest problems in organizations today.
Oliver Emberton said that. It's profound and so true. Urgency wrecks productivity. Urgent but unimportant tasks are major distractions. Last-minute distractions are not necessarily priorities. Sometimes important tasks stare you right in the face, but you neglect them and respond to urgent but unimportant things. You need to reverse that.