I often find it difficult at the beginning/end of the day to just...sit and make plans (life, work, etc). I can knock out Todo list items, but long-term critical thinking is becoming way more difficult that I remember.
I'm mid-way through my career and have a young family. Perhaps this is just "Dad brain" where my mind has adapted to constantly reacting to entropy vs anticipating the environment.
How do you make plans under conditions of chronic distress and distraction?
You also have to become antisocial and turn off your phone, or at least put it on silent and preferably disable notifications for everything. Then there's cultivating the right headspace for deep work. Many solve this by doing various rituals (meditating for 15 mins each morning, taking a cold shower etc).