Lean Quote: Don’t Be Left Wishing You Had Started A Year Ago

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"A year from now, you may wish you had started today."   —  Karen Lamb 

It never feels like quite the right time. There’s always something just a little bit more pressing to finish up first. You’ll start that new project or new hobby tomorrow, or maybe this weekend. You’ll get started learning a new skill as soon as you have a little more time. Pretty quickly, a week has passed, then a month, and then a year. Looking back you’ll realize, that if only you had started way back when, you’d be a year into your project. You’d be a year into mastering a new skill.

This quote, attributed to author Karen Lamb, might inspire you to get going on that project you've been putting off for "someday." "A year from now you may wish you had started today" simply says: The time is now.

Nike had a motto for its athletics line for a while, “Yesterday you said tomorrow.” It resounded heavily with those who often find themselves saying they’ll start running or hitting the gym tomorrow, or this weekend or next week. Everyone knows that feeling. You tell yourself you don’t have enough time tonight, or the weather isn’t great or that you really just don’t feel like it. Tomorrow comes, and the same excuses get used.

Combat this procrastination by taking that other Nike motto to heart, “Just do it”. Plan a day to begin and don’t miss that date no matter what. Dig deep, drag yourself to the gym, or to that seminar or class and just get started. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to keep going once you’ve started. Once you’ve been at it for a year, you’ll be proud of yourself for everything you’ve accomplished in the year, rather than lamenting the fact you never got around to beginning.

It's easy to delay working on our goals when the day-to-day stuff takes up so much of our time. But as The Happiness Project author Gretchen Rubin says, "The days are long, but the years are short." Just a simple reminder not to let the years fly by without meaning or enjoying them as much as you can.