Sandra Boynton is the Shakespeare of board books.

She’s the best there ever was. The GOAT. Her books are short and punchy, so kids love them. They’re hilarious and fun to read, so parents love them. Our household’s current favorite, Dinosaur Dance, begins, “Zang! Bop! Kiddly-pow! The dinosaur dance is starting now!” Now that’s how you start a board book.

Her fellow author Ann Patchett put it best: “Sandra Boynton is to the board book what Dr. Seuss was to the picture book, what Maurice Sendak was to illustration, what Shel Silverstein was to children’s poetry. It’s just her up there at the top and then a whole lot of other people sharing second place.”

Many of us keep a mental list of “things to fix” in our lives, from saving more for retirement to cutting back on coffee.

The thing is, drinking too much coffee isn’t a serious problem for most people. Unless we’re guzzling the stuff, it’s just not that bad for us. But it’s easy to give everything on this “things to fix” list the same mental weight. It’s easy to focus on drinking less coffee when what we really need to do is start contributing monthly to our Roth IRA. In 30 years, the coffee thing won’t matter. But the Roth IRA will.

Two months ago, I signed up for a webinar about my state pension.

The webinar was yesterday. It was two hours long and not exactly riveting, but I did learn quite a bit about how my retirement system works, and the knowledge I gained might save me many thousands of dollars in the future. I’m glad I went.

And if the sign-up process had taken place last week instead of two months ago, I never would have attended.

It can take weeks to get an important meeting together. You need to:

• decide what needs to be decided at the meeting and construct a solid agenda
• figure out who needs to be there (and who doesn't)
• find a time that fits everyone's schedule (especially Maria and Will, who are always booked out for weeks).

When the big day finally arrives, all that prep work is a distant memory. These days, you have new priorities, and this meeting (one of five on your calendar today) is getting in the way of these new priorities. You’re tempted to just get through it, to run an easygoing, lightweight meeting that sort of circles around the issue at hand but doesn’t result in any decisions being made or problems being solved.

What needs to be true for us to start our work?

Do we need to be well-rested? Feeling good? Do we need at least a solid hour free? We all have unspoken conditions for starting our work, and it’s easy for these conditions to constrict over time, to creep toward perfection.

Freelancers particularly struggle with this. When you control your own schedule, you can decide under what conditions you’ll work. And it’s possible to set the bar so high that very little work gets started.