Getting Things Done - Reach Your Goals

"Just Do It" the old Nike ad urged us all. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. 


"How," asked a man of Sir Walter Raleigh, "do you accomplish so much and in so short a time?" "When I have anything do, I go and do it," was the reply. The man who always acts promptly, even if he makes occasional mistakes, will succeed  when a procrastinator will fail even if he have the better judgment.

When asked how he managed to get so much done, Lord Chesterfield replied: "Because I never put off till morrow what I can do to-day."

Dewitt, pensionary of Holland, answered the same question: "Nothing is more easy; never do but one thing at a time, and never put off until to-morrow what can be done to-day."

Walter Scott was a very punctual man. This was the secret of his enormous achievements. He made it a rule to answer all letters the day they were received. He rose at five. By breakfast time he had broken the neck of the day's work, as he used to say. Writing to a youth who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel: "Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not having your time fully employed—I mean what the women call dawdling. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after business, never before it."

The world knows that the prompt man's bills and notes will be paid on the day they are due, and will trust him. People will give him credit, for they know they can depend upon him. But lack of promptness will shake confidence almost as quickly as downright dishonesty. The man who has a habit of dawdling or procrastination will reveal it in everything he does. He is late at meals, late at work, dawdles on the street, loses his train, misses his appointments, and dawdles at his store until the banks are  closed. Everybody he meets suffers from his procrastination, for dawdling becomes practically a disease.

"You will never find time for anything," said Charles Buxton; "if you want time you must make it."

The best work we ever do is that which we do now, and can never repeat. "Too late," is the curse of the unsuccessful, who forget that "one today is worth two tomorrows."

Time accepts no sacrifice; it admits of neither redemption nor atonement. It is the true avenger. Your enemy may become your friend, your injurer may do you justice, but time is inexorable, and has no mercy.

If you want to reach your goals, Act Now. Just get started and get some momentum going!