Manage to-do list creep.

Dedicate different times of day to different activities: creative work, meetings, correspondence, administrative work, and so on.

Use creative triggers.

Be Excellent at Anything and The Power of Full Engagement (the

And tasks that take, say, fifty hours—which could be how long it takes you to complete a meaningful creative task—don’t

projects you’d like to attempt in your spare time, and set aside a specific time each week (or each day) to make progress on that list.

big things.

Frequency keeps the pressure off.

The single most important change you can make in your working habits is to switch to creative work first, reactive work second. This means blocking off a large chunk of time every day for creative work on your own priorities, with the phone and e-mail off.