Time Waits for No Man

Strike when the iron is hot!  It is remarkable to me how often opportunities are lost by inaction.  Whether in business, or in life, time waits for no man.  Opportunities present themselves to us.  In the moment, we sometimes need to make a split second decision.  Other times, we need to ponder for a finite amount of time before making a decision. How long that finite amount of time is can vary.  It can be a few minutes, a few hours, a few days, or even a few months, depending on the decision itself.  The determination as to the importance and impact of the timing of making that decision needs to happen as quickly as humanly possible, for obvious reasons.  If a split second decision is necessary, taking a few minutes to decide will miss the opportunity, and so on and so forth.

Some of the challenges of delayed decision making have to do with paralysis by analysis.  If you look long and hard enough, you will always see impediments.  Clearly, if you don't look at all you can easily fall into a hole and make a poor decision.  There is a balance, as there is with everything.  Primarily, a delayed decision misses the emotional opportunity to address an issue in real time, when those involved are most engaged.  Waiting creates space that can quickly be filled by other opportunities, whether alternatives or unrelated.  Nature abhors a vacuum. Time waits for no man.

Procrastination challenges many of us, and for many reasons.  Sometimes it's fear of failure that keeps us from getting things done.  Sometimes it's fear of success.  We can be paralyzed by various fears and self doubts that keep us from moving forward.  Then there's just the lack of confidence in what we are proposing to do.  Perfection is the enemy of the good.  If we wait until everything is perfect, we will almost always have waited too long.  Most times one has to find comfort and confidence in what they know and move forward with it at the time.  Time waits for no man.