All office workers are afraid of being late for work. The Post Office Girl 

In fact, one of the main lesson to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies (as well as from the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power. [...] The reason is simple: maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources. On reflection, it's no surprise that declines of societies tend to follow swiftly on their peaks. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

“If the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is eat a live frog, then nothing worse can happen for the rest of the day!” Eat That Frog!

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. The Art Of War