Now is the Best Time

 

There is no better time to focus our attention to goal realization than now.

Frankly speaking, yesterday was a better time. The day before yesterday was even better than yesterday. But the past is done. There’s no point in groping over time spent. But to delay further would be a sin to oneself.

My father used to work for a company as head of its engineering department. His department is responsible for installation of machines and upkeep of all the engineering needs of the company including its utilities such as water, electricity, and communication. He told me one time over dinner that he gets his assignments from the company’s Plant Manager. He said there were occasions (quite frequently though) wherein some jobs required urgency and that time was of the essence so they have to work on those jobs round the clock. He usually receives a `Job Order` form for each job and on the space for `Due Date` was written `yesterday` instead of urgent or ASAP or a definite date. It was the plant manager’s way of jokingly asking that the job requires urgency because each hour that passes by would mean loses for the company not to mention the commitment to its client. They even have clients that penalize delays in their production delivery and it reflects a bad image for their company.

I can’t overemphasize the importance of time when it comes to goal attainment. Each day, week, or month’s delay may mean lost opportunities and this might derail the timeframe you set to attain your goal.

Though there is no specific or particular “due date” for goal attainment, we must not treat goal attainment half-heartedly. Give it full-time attention, effort, and energy and the rewards will come to you more than you expect. There may be instances wherein delays are unavoidable. Be sure to give it a think over and exhaust all possibilities to minimize each delay. If still, delays are unavoidable, then we must patiently give way to it but under no circumstances must procrastination take its place in your pursuit.

Like any other endeavor, it is human nature that delays do happen. Nobody’s perfect. Every time it does, we must pick up a lesson or two from each experience. As the saying goes: charge it to experience.

Talking of experience, it reminds me of the importance of history lessons. There is an adage: “Learn from the mistakes of others; you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself”. This is one of the reasons why we have history subjects in school.

You may wonder how history is related to goal realization. I also used to wonder why we have to study history lessons, what good it will do to the present and future generations. I used to think that we can’t turn back the hands of time to correct mistakes and studying history is a waste of time and energy.

But then I realized that through history, we can learn from the achievements and failures of other people. We can imitate and analyze the traits and characters of great achievers and at the same time avoid the pitfalls of failures done in olden times. History will give us an insight where we can draw countless lessons that will greatly help us to make better decisions on certain aspects of life particularly those related to goal realization.

We all know that time is gold. Spending time to pursue our goal is time well invested. Even if after spending most of the time to goal attainment and we haven’t cultivated it, we can become history ourselves. We can pass on to our next generation our experiences (be they good or not so good) that will serve as lessons for them. In effect, this will save time for our successors to continue our pursuit.

One way or the other, we can say to ourselves that we have contributed or done our part, no matter how menial it is, as long as it is intended wholeheartedly to goal realization.

Now is the Best Time