Excellent story. I think people in general overestimate the time they have available to do things and underestimate the time it takes to actually do it; which inevitibly leads to situations where you think you can make up for "lost" time by sprinting forward, tomorrow. The most valuable lesson I learned about productivity is that small actions, done now, can lead to huge productivity gains tomorrow. The hard part of course is to subconsciously justify to yourself that those small actions are actually making significant progress towards your end goal. It's important not to get discouraged and keep charging ahead.

What's more insidious are those "busy working" tasks that can consume your day where you actually feel productive, but haven't made any real progress towards where you want to be.

There's an excellent TED talk by Daniel Goldstein about the present and future self; highly recommended: http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goldstein_the_battle_between...