Our lives are like finely-tuned machines: different components drift out of alignment over time. Our physical health, our mental health, our relationships, our careers—some area will always need attention. There will always be problems to solve.

What’s important, though, is that we actually get around to solving these problems instead of just planning to solve them. To that end, we need to schedule time on our calendars—appointments with ourselves—to think through and address the big issues in our lives. I like Think Days for this purpose, but even a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon is a good start.

We’ve all got areas of our lives that need some focused thought followed by action (for me, at the moment, it’s my eating and exercise habits that need work). But our lives are too busy for an ad-hoc approach. We must schedule problem-solving time or it will never happen.

The good news is, that’s all we need to do right now. Not solve the biggest problems in our lives—simply commit to a time when we’ll start.