I am a morning person—a 5 A.M. morning person.

I am also an Eat That Frog! kind-of-guy. (By this, I mean I believe in Brain Tracy’s advice to always do my most important task first.)

My dilemma? I am trying to decide whether to first do a 5 A.M. workout or to first do a 5 A.M. (4-hour) writing block.

Habit changes are hard, and the stakes are high. The workouts are important for my long-term health goals, whereas consistent early morning writingblocks are important for my short-term career goals.

For now, since I have a new office space that also has an accessible early morning gym, I am experimenting with both options—but the bottom line is at some point I will have to prioritize one task over the other.

Identifying and writing out goals is easy; clearly ordering my goals (and their associated tasks) as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, is hard.