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.