Too often, silly laziness winds up costing me time, effort and even money.

Yesterday I was home looking for a pen. I checked the drawer, but saw only a pile of old crayons, markers and pencils. After moving one or two of them without finding anything, I wandered around the house in a futile search.

Finally I returned to the pen drawer and did what I should have done all along: dug deep into the pile. Sure enough, there were two pens! But in the meantime, time, effort and who knows what else were lost.

A wise person once said, “Genius is the ability to evade work by doing something right the first time.”

Or to put it another way, if you don’t have time to do things right, how could you possibly have time to do them wrong?

This quote is attributed to Coach Bobby Knight: “Do what needs to be done. Do it when it needs to be done. Do it as well as it can be done. Do this all the time.”

Ollie Gelston coached basketball for many years at Montclair State University in Northern New Jersey. He had only one rule: Be in the right place and the right time, and do the right thing.

No matter what words you use, it’s time to make quality a part of today’s living. Start by starting correctly.

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Would you like to improve at what you do? “The Improvement Factor: How Winners Turn Practice into Success” can show you how! Are you a coach? “Ten Things Great Coaches Know” can make you a better one.