Stephen Covey teaches 'The 7 Habits of Highly effective People'.

Covey's Habit #2 is 'Begin with the End in Mind'.

In summary - know where you want to go before you waste time and effort doing & going.

That's definitely good advice...however, I think it is more important to 'Begin with the Start in Mind'.

I say this for 2 reasons:

1. Now is as real as it gets. Certainly, it is more real than the future. So, as we go about our business we do better when we get present and be present. Business is not primarily about end points. Business is about a chain of present thoughts, present feelings, and present actions. Business is about envisioning a future and acting now...and now is always the Start...in fact, now is the only time we have.
2. When it comes to highly-effective performance, individual success is intimately tied to individual strengths. When we start business work, regardless of its nature - whether physical work or brain work - we start with a unique personal set of talents. Our innate talents exist prior to the arrival of our work. When work arrives we gain work-knowledge and we gain work-skills and to a degree we learn how to do the work. How much we learn and how well we do work depends on many things including the 'Big 3' - attitude, intelligence, & self-control. Most people know the Big 3 and make efforts to cover them. But - most people do not spend the time required to understand or measure the innate talents that represent the 4th major condition for successful performance of business work. Any serious plan for the future must give quality consideration to individual's innate talents - and do that now.