Last Updated: February 21, 2023 by Quote.cc Team
Today I’d like to share 300 of the most brilliant, most motivational, and insightful procrastination quotes of all time.
Procrastination is one of the most human behaviors. We’re all guilty of putting off what we know is essential from time to time, and it seems the more pressing the task at hand, the better we are at avoiding it.
Sure, it means that every time we have an essential deadline, we end up with a spotlessly clean house and an empty inbox, but the real work gets left until the very last minute and is finished in a frenzy of stress and caffeine.
But we can gain control over procrastination by noticing it as soon as possible and stopping it in its tracks. On the contrary, you know you have a bad habit when you’re aware you’re putting something off, and you continue avoiding it anyway.
Reading procrastination quotes can be just the wake-up call that you need to get going on that important project you’ve been putting off, make that phone call that you’ve been avoiding, or get started moving in the direction of your dreams.
And a big part of what helped me break out of that habit was reading about how others had tackled procrastination throughout the centuries. I hope these timeless thoughts will be as helpful for you as they have been for me.
This article will find a comprehensive collection of quotes about procrastination. These quotes come from various sources, including everything from ancient Greek philosophers to contemporary authors, psychologists, comedians, and more. Some of these quotes will make you laugh, some of them will make you think, and some of them, hopefully, will inspire you and give you the motivation that you need to stop procrastinating.
300 Procrastination Quotes
Top 10 Procrastination Quotes
“We should recognise there’s a closing window of productivity every day and you have to make best use of it because after that, your efforts are going to be feeble and probably guilt-ridden…” – Piers Steel
“We shall never have more time. We have, and have always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going day in and day out. Concentrate on something useful. Having decided to achieve a task, achieve it at all costs.” – Arnold Bennett
“We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it?” – Gautama Buddha
“We can all remember a time we procrastinated and it paid off, and we hang onto that like gold because we wanna use that to fuel the self-deception that really is at the heart of procrastination. So, yes, procrastination can pay, but it’s usually harmful.” – Timothy Pychyl
“We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.” – Erica Jong
“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The ‘tide in the affairs of men’ does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’ There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect.” – Martin Luther King
“We all sorely complain of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
“True it is: all men procrastinate and are sorry for it. I think, however, that even the most active find as much to be sorry for as the laziest; for those who do more also see more that might have been done, and see it more clearly.” – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
“Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you go, and fix it as you go.” – Paul Arden
What Is Procrastination?
“Procrastination is, hands down, our favorite form of self-sabotage.” – Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby
“Procrastination is the thief of time: Year after year it steals, till all are fled, and to the mercies of a moment leaves the vast concerns of an eternal scene.” – Edward Young
“Procrastination is the thief of time.” – Edward Young
“Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.” – Nassim N. Taleb
“Procrastination is the seed of self-destruction.” – Matthew Burton
“Procrastination is the lazy cousin of fear. When we feel anxiety around an activity, we postpone it.” – Noelle Hancock
“Procrastination is the kidnapper of souls and the recruiting-officer of hell.” – Edward Irving
“Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.”
“Procrastination is the fear of success. People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now. Because success is heavy, carries responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the “someday I’ll” philosophy”” – Denis Waitley
“Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.” – Napoleon Hill
“Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday and avoiding today.” – Wayne Dyer
“Procrastination is something best put off until tomorrow.” – Attributed to Gerald Vaughan
“Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin.” – Victor Kiam
“Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin.” – Victor Kiam
“Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.” – Wayne Gretzky
“Procrastination is not Laziness”, I tell him. “It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.” – Julia Cameron
“Procrastination is like going to a fancy restaurant and filling up on bread and not leaving enough room for dinner.” – Richie Norton
“Procrastination is like a credit card: it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.” – Christopher Parker
“Procrastination is illogical from every viewpoint. It is like the man who wanted to cross the stream, so he sat on the bank to wait for all the water to run by.” – Vernon Howard
“Procrastination is a way for us to be satisfied with second-rate results; we can always tell ourselves we’d have done a better job if only we’d had more time. If you’re good at rationalizing, you can keep yourself feeling rather satisfied this way, but it’s a cheap happy. You’re whittling your expectations of yourself down lower and lower.” – Richard O’Conner
Funny Procrastination Quotes
“You may delay, but time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin
“You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate.”
“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King
“You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood. What mood is that? Last-minute panic.” – Bill Watterson
“You can’t get much done in life if you only work on the days when you feel good.”
“You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.”
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Yesterday is a cancelled check; Tomorrow is a promissory note; Today is the only cash you have, so spend it wisely.” – Kim Lyons
“Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow!” – Don Herold
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” – C. Northcote Parkinson
“When there is a hill to climb, don’t think that waiting will make it smaller.” – H. Jackson Brown
“Warning: dates on this calendar are closer than they appear.” – Unknown
“Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait. The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don’t count.” – Robert Anthony
“Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” – M. Scott Peck
“Tomorrow is the only day in the year that appeals to a lazy man.” – Jimmy Lyons
“Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.” – Spanish Proverb
“Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.” – Jean de La Bruyère
“This one makes a net, this one stands and wishes. Would you like to make a bet which one gets the fishes.” – Chinese Rhyme
“Things dreaded require double time to accomplish them.” – James Lendall Basford
“There’s nothing to match curling up with a good book when there’s a repair job to be done around the house.” – Joe Ryan
“There is sometimes only a very fine line between deliberation and procrastination.” – Paul A. Walker
“There is nothing so fatal to character as half-finished tasks.” – David Lloyd George
“The next day is never so good as the day before.” – Publilius Syrus
“The most dangerous way we sabotage ourselves is by waiting for the perfect moment to begin. Nothing works perfectly the first time, or the first fifty times. Everything has a learning curve. The beginning is just that—a beginning. Surrender your desire to do it flawlessly on the first try. It’s not possible. Learn to learn. Learn to fail. Learn to learn from failing. And begin today. Begin now. Stop waiting.” – Vironika Tugaleva
“The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.” – Helen Rowland
“The fact that I procrastinate and still get the job done is the reason I still procrastinate.”
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
“Stop talking. Start walking.” – L.M. Heroux
“Stop killing and wasting time. Get something done today.” – Sunday Adelaja
“Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.” – John Andrew Holms
“Space we can recover, time never.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“’someday’ is not a day of the week.”
“Someday is not a day of the week.” – Janet Dailey
“Procrastination has robbed us of too many opportunities.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach
“Procrastination has been called a thief—the thief of time. I wish it were no worse than a thief. It is a murderer; and that which it kills is not time merely, but the immortal soul.” – William Nevins
“Procrastination gives you something to look forward to.” – Joan Konner
“Procrastination and excuses are sour spices that spoil the sweet taste of an effective work. They must hence, not be prompted under desire, partly because they are strictly time-stripping and also because they have no known essence.” – Israelmore Ayivor
“Procrastinating does nothing more than add to your do list. Do it, be done with it!” – Catherine Pulsifer
“Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.” – Steven Wright
“Perhaps the most valuable result of an education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” – Thomas Huxley
“Perfectionism is the mother of procrastination.”
“Perfection’ is man’s ultimate illusion. It simply doesn’t exist in the universe…. If you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do.” – David D. Burns
“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone” – Pablo Picasso
“One of these days, is none of these days.” – Proverb
“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” – Dale Carnegie
“One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow.” – Vincent T. Foss
“On ACTION: “Stop talking;start DO-ing.” – Nanci McGraw
“Often just by taking action, by doing something about the situation can relieve the stress and help correct the situation.” – Catherine Pulsifer
“Often greater risk is involved in postponement than in making a wrong decision.” – Harry A. Hopf
“Nothing so perilous as procrastination.” – John Lyly
“Nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute.”
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” – William James
“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing so futile.”
“If and When were planted, and Nothing grew.” – Proverb
“If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing late.” – Frederick Oliver
“I’ve been looking over the list of spring chores I made up last fall, and darned if they aren’t fall chores, after all.” – Robert Brault
“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.” – Jerome K. Jerome
“I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.” – Rabindranath Tagore
“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” – Pearl S. Buck
“I do my work at the same time each day — the last minute.”
“I am a person who works well under pressure. In fact, I work so well under pressure that at times, I will procrastinate in order to create this pressure.” – Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank
“How to stop procrastinating starts with believing you can overcome procrastination.” – Robert Moment
“How soon not now, becomes never.” – Martin Luther
“How often do you find yourself saying, “In a minute”, “I’ll get to it” or “Tomorrow’s good enough” and every other possible excuse in the book? Compare it with how often you decide it’s got to be done, so let’s get on and do it! That should tell you just how serious your procrastinating problem really is.” – Stephen Richards
“How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time.” – Fred Brooks
“He who thinks too much about every step he takes will always stay on one leg.” – Chinese Proverb
“He who puts off nothing till tomorrow has done a great deal.” – Baltasar Gracián
“He who postpones the time for right-living resembles the rustic who’s waiting until the river’s passed by: yet it glides on, and will roll on, gliding forever.” – Horace
“He who hesitates is last.” – Mae West
“He who hesitates is a damned fool.” – Mae West
“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.” – Victor Hugo
“He who begun has half finished. Dare to be wise; begin.” – Horace
“He who awaits much can expect little.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Great matter-days remain on the day stone balance, affecting your life on the day the occur and every day thereafter. So the earlier they happen, the better; waiting means potentially sacrificing years or even decades of benefit.” – Ron Lizzi
“Great acts are made up of small deeds.” – Lao Tzu
“God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.” – Attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo
“Getting an idea should be like sitting on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something.” – E.L. Simpson
“Begin while others are procrastinating. Work while others are wishing.” – William Arthur Ward
“Begin to weave and God will give you the thread.” – German Proverb
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake.” – Francis Bacon
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake.” – Attributed to Francis Bacon
“Avoid delays: procrastination always does harm.” – Lucan
“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.” – Robert Benchley
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work” – Stephen King
“’One of these days’ is none of these days.”
Procrastination Motivation Quotes
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” – David Allen
“Your Life Is Happening Right Now: Don’t let procrastination take over your life. Be brave and take risks. Your life is happening right now.” – Roy T. Bennett
“Your ideas have legs and just as they run through your head, they could be running through someone else’s head and it’s just a matter of who gets to the finish line first. Nothing is new under the sun so act on your ideas.” – Sanjo Jendayi
“Your competition isn’t other people. Your competition is your procrastination. Your ego. The unhealthy food you’re consuming, the knowledge you neglect. The negative behavior you’re nurturing & your lack of creativity. Compete against that.”
“You, as a person who wants to be successful, need to make ‘I’m doing it now’ a part of your daily vocabulary. Not, ‘I’ll do it after this email,’ or ‘I’ll do it tonight’.” – Jacob Reimer
“You probably only have 4 or 5 hours a day of good quality concentration time… what are you doing with those five hours? I find if I work hard for those five hours, when I’m at my top, I can goof off for the rest of the day.” – Piers Steel
“You must not procrastinate. Rather, you should make preparations so that even if you did die tonight, you would have no regrets. If you develop an appreciation for the uncertainty and imminence of death, your sense of the importance of using your time wisely will get stronger and stronger.” – Dalai Lama
“You may not be punished for your procrastination, but for sure you will be punished by your procrastination.” – Debasish Mridha
“The really happy people are those who have broken the chains of procrastination, those who find satisfaction in doing the job at hand. They’re full of eagerness, zest, productivity. You can be, too.” – Norman Vincent Peale
“The real difference between those who want to write and those that do, is that those that do get up every day and do it.” – Leonard Wolf
“The production of a creative piece, there’s a lot of thought that has to go into it, and if we try to say that anything but brush to canvas is procrastination, then we’re undermining what it is to be creative. And so I think we have to watch that we don’t call every delay or every sort of inaction, procrastination.” – Timothy Pychyl
“The problem with tomorrow is that I have never seen a tomorrow. Tomorrow does not exist. Tomorrow only exist in the mind of dreamers and losers.” – Robert Kiyosaki
“The opportunity often slips away while we deliberate on it.” – Publilius Syrus
“The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.” – Alexandre Graham Bell
“The more time you have to do things, the less you are able to get done.” – Joyce Rachelle
“The man who waits to know everything is the man who never does anything.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough
“The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.” – Thomas Sowell
“The habit of always putting off an experience until you can afford it, or until the time is right, or until you know how to do it is one of the greatest burglars of joy. Be deliberate, but once you’ve made up your mind -jump in.” – Charles R. Swindoll
“Neither a wise nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
“My mother always told me I wouldn’t amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, ‘Just wait.” – Judy Tenuta
“My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry ’til a more convenient season.” – Mary Todd Lincoln
“My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can to-day. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him.” – Charles Dickens
“My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.” – Charles Dickens
“Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started.” – David Allen
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” – Jim Rohn
“Lingering labors come to naught.” – Robert Southwell
“Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.” – Henry Miller
“Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone.” – Shannon L. Alder
“Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination, and many studies suggest that procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that of course creates a vicious cycle.” – James Surowiecki
“It’s the job that’s never started that takes longest to finish.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
“It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the masterwork. Now, I’m beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I’m happy at least that I didn’t wait twenty years.” – Paul Coehlo
“If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.”
“If you wait for things to be perfect, you walk away with nothing. Just jump in and get started.”
“If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.” – George Bernard Shaw
“If you put off everything till you’re sure of it, you’ll never get anything done.” – Norman Vincent Peale
“If you procrastinate when faced with a big difficult problem… break the problem into parts, and handle one part at a time.” – Robert Collier
“If you have goals and procrastination you have nothing. If you have goals and you take action, you will have anything you want.” – Thomas J. Vilord
“If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.” – Hilary Mantel
“If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves” – David Allen
“If you choose to not deal with an issue, then you give up your right of control over the issue and it will select the path of least resistance.” – Susan Del Gatto
“If you believe you can accomplish everything by “cramming” at the eleventh hour, by all means, don’t lift a finger now. But you may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining.” – Max Brooks
“If you always do what is easy and choose the path of least resistance, you never step outside your comfort zone. Great things don’t come from comfort zones.” – Roy Bennett
“If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.” – Lee Iacocca
“For true procrastinators, nothing gets done without a deadline. As we say in journalism: The deadline is your friend. And when that deadline looms too near to procrastinate any longer, you need to take care of business. Crank it out, baby.” – Seth Stevenson
“Following through is the only thing that separates dreamers from people that accomplish great things.” – Gene Hayden
“Follow effective actions with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” – Peter Drucker
“Every seasoned procrastinator loves to tell himself that, amid his flurry of avoidance strategies—rearranging the furniture in his office, pitching himself into a YouTube rabbit hole, surrendering to a fit of self-Googling—his brain is secretly marinating ideas and hatching plans.” – Jessica Winter
“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
“Due tomorrow? Do tomorrow.”
“Doubt increases with inaction. Clarity reveals itself in momentum. Growth comes from progress. For all these reasons, BEGIN.” – Brendon Burchard
“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” – Napoleon Hill
“Don’t wait for your ship to come in, and feel angry and cheated when it doesn’t. Get going with something small.” – Irene Kassorla
“Don’t wait for someone to take you under their wing. Find a good wing and climb up underneath it.” – Frank C. Bucaro
“Don’t wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.” – Charles Richter
“Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow.” – James A. Michener
“Don’t procrastinate. Putting off an unpleasant task until tomorrow simply gives you more time for your imagination to make a mountain out a possible molehill. More time for anxiety to sap your self-confidence. Do it now, brother, do it now.” – Science Digest
“…the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.” – Dale Carnegie
“…hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by.” – Seneca
“… you shall find that delay breeds danger, & that procrastination in perils is but the mother of mishap.” – Robert Greene
“… putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.” – Seneca
“… a man who procrastinates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance…” – Hunter S. Thompson
“… a man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin
Perfectionism And Procrastination Quotes
“Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated.”
“Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.” – Quintilian
“When you procrastinate and do something that makes you feel momentarily good, you get a reward. The problem is you never get to the source of the negative emotions that cause you to avoid the task in the first place.” – Fuschia Sirois
“When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice.” – William James
“Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.” – Michael Landon
“Whatever you want to achieve, you have to keep on working on it continuously, setting and achieving targets. There should be no procrastination for whatever reason.” – Chitesh Bhat
“What may be done at any time will be done at no time.” – Scottish Proverb
“What is deferred is not avoided.” – Thomas More
“We’re our own hardest critics and it’s easy to let ourselves down. Sleeping too late. Procrastinating.” – Marina Keegan
“We’re doing all these things so we can squeeze things together so we can save time, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t have anymore time, I have less time. But let’s just say we could save up a whole chunk of time and set it aside, you know what we’d do with it? Nothing. Nothing at all. Isn’t that the point, to be able to do nothing at all? We’re not guaranteed that later-on chunk of time, all we have is here and now, and that’s why procrastination feels so right. Procrastination is not the problem, it is the solution. It is the universe’s way of saying, ‘Stop, slow down. You move too fast’… Procrastinate now, don’t put it off.” – Ellen DeGeneres
“The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn’t make people happy.” – James Surowiecki
“The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing the task itself.” – Rita Emmett
“The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform. It is true, that no diligence can ascertain success; death may intercept the swiftest career; but he who is cut off in the execution of an honest undertaking has at least the honour of falling in his rank, and has fought the battle, though he missed the victory.” – Samuel Johnson
“The best way to get something done is to begin.”
“It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth—and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up—that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.” – Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
“It is only by working the rituals, that any significant degree of understanding can develop. If you wait until you are positive you understand all aspects of the ceremony before beginning to work, you will never begin to work.” – Lon Milo DuQuette
“It is not really work if you are having fun.” – Pierre Omidyar
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” – Seneca
“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” – Leonardo da Vinci
“It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in.” – Earl of Chesterfield
“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work” – Chuck Close
“Indecisiveness and procrastination are the chosen ways of life for most people. They follow the course of least resistance, which is to do nothing. This provides a security blanket of never being wrong, never making mistakes, never being disappointed and never failing. But they will also never succeed.” – David Peoples
“In the conduct of almost every affair slowness and procrastination are hateful.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
“In putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it.” – Charles Baudelaire
“In delay there lies no plenty.” – William Shakespeare
“In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do. The worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” – Olin Miller
“If you want to get ahead in life, I’ve found that perhaps the most useless word in the world is “tomorrow.” – José N. Harris
Anti Procrastination Quotes
“Today’s technology can help us not procrastinate if we use it wisely. We don’t have to surf the Web for hours on irrelevant tasks. We can get systems that time us out after 10 minutes. We don’t have to have a Blackberry with us at all times. Use technology as a tool, not as a means of delay.” – Joseph Ferrari
“To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.” – Eva Young
“To procrastinate seems inherent in man, for if you do to-day that you may enjoy to-morrow it is but deferring the enjoyment; so that to be idle or industrious, vicious or virtuous, is but with a view of procrastinating the one or the other.” – Benjamin Haydon
“To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.” – Syndey Smith
“To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.” – Sydney Smith
“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Marthe Troly-Curtin
“Time wasted is existence; used is life.” – Edward Young
“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.” – Denis Waitley
“This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live.” – General Omar Bradley
“Thinking too much leads to paralysis by analysis. It’s important to think things through, but many use thinking as a means of avoiding action.” – Robert Herjavec
“Think of many things; do one.” – Portuguese proverb
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” – Abraham Lincoln
“The greatest thief this world has ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large.” – Attributed to Josh Billings
“The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.” – Dawson Trotman
“The forces of procrastination, self-doubt, worry, cultural expectations, even family and friends, can hold your life in place, like Gravity.” – Matt Gersper
“There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.” – Mignon McLaughlin
“There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back.” – Tom DeMarco
“The worst form of procrastination is reading a procrastination quote, feeling the guilt, and not doing anything about it.” – Unknown
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
“The trouble is that you think you have time.” – Jack Kornfield
“The time to begin most things is ten years ago.” – Mignon McLaughlin
“The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” – Source unknown
“The search for the perfect venture can turn into procrastination. Your idea may or may not have merit. The key is to get started.” – Unknown
“The scholar’s greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.” – Stephen King
“The best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.” – Dale Carnegie
“The assumption of time is one of humanity’s greatest follies. We tell ourselves that there’s always tomorrow, when we can no more predict tomorrow than we can the weather. Procrastination is the thief of dreams.” – Richard Paul Evans
“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
“Sure, gathering resources and information is productive and useful but some people seem to be unable to make decisions – these are the serious procrastinators. They let others decide for them, so there is no blame for failure attributed to them. Procrastination is not waiting and it is more than delaying. It is a decision to not act. It is very helpful and useful to gather information to make an informed decision, but when one simply continues to gather beyond the point of adequate resources, then they are being indecisive and the waiting is counterproductive.” – Joseph Ferrari
“Success is not obtained overnight. It comes in instalments; you get a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow until the whole package is given out. The day you procrastinate, you lose that day’s success.” – Israelmore Ayivor
“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.” – Michael Landon
“So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don’t sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.” – Lee Iacocca
“Remember how long you’ve been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn’t use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don’t use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.” – Marcus Aurelius
“Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.” – George Claude Lorimer
“Procrastinators are tremendously great excuse makers. They always have a reason. They never take the responsibility on themselves. It’s why working on time management doesn’t provide relief for procrastinators. They will have their ready excuse. It’s never their fault.” – Joseph Ferrari
“Procrastinator? No. I save all my homework until the last minute because then I’ll be older, and therefore wiser.”
“Procrastination. Because every problem deserves a chance to solve itself.” – Neil Thomas Stacey
“Procrastination usually results in sorrowful regret. Today’s duties put off until tomorrow give us a double burden to bear; the best way is to do them in their proper time.” – Ida Scott Taylor
“Procrastination usually results in sorrowful regret. Today’s duties put off tomorrow give us a double burden to bear; the best way is to do them in their proper time.” – Ida Scott Taylor
“Procrastination taught me how to do 30 minutes of work in 8 hours and 8 hours of work in 30 minutes.”
“Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.” – Mason Cooley
“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.” – Peter Drucker
“Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost legendary. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Perseverance and determination alone are omnipotent.” – Calvin Coolidge
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
“No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare.” – Charles Baudelaire
“No more excuses or procrastination! Stop allowing your days to be stolen by busy nothingness and take calculated steps towards your goals.” – Steve Maraboli
“Never put things off…you will wake up and find them gone.” – James Jones
“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.” – Mark Twain
“Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today.” – Thomas Jefferson
“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.” – Ivan Turgenev
“If we accept and internalize the fact of our own mortality, then, by definition, we have to deal with the essential questions of how we live and spend our allotted time. We have to stop procrastinating, pretending that we have forever to do what we want to do and be what we long to be.” – Surya Das
“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.” – Thomas de Quincey
“If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.” – Rita Mae Brown
“If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I’d say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.” – Lee Iacocca
“If I am not for myself, who is for me? When I am for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” – Rabbi Hillel
“I’m going to stop putting things off, starting tomorrow!” – Sam Levenson
“I’d be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I’d been given. I’d be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.” – Denzel Washington
“I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.” – Susan Orlean
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” – Douglas Adams
“Don’t procrastinate, life is way too short. Do things as they come to you, live your life like a high-speed sport.” – Julie Hebert
“Don’t fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever, or not at all.” – Mignon McLaughlin
“Doing things at the last minute reminds us of the importance of doing things at the first minute.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
“Doing just a little bit during the time we have available puts you that much further ahead than if you took no action at all.” – Byron Pulsifer
“Do you know what happens when you give a procrastinator a good idea? Nothing!” – Donald Gardner
“Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.” – Dale Carnegie
“Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you.” – Paulo Coelho
“Do nothing by halves which can be done by quarters.” – F. R. Scott
“Do not put your work off till to-morrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.” – Hesiod
“Do first what you don’t want to do most.” – Clifford Cohen
“Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.” – M. Scott Peck
“Delay not to seize the hour!” – Aeschylus
“Delay is the deadliest form of denial.” – C. Northcote Parkinson
“Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.” – Miguel De Cervantes
“Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.” – William Shakespeare
“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” – Alexander Graham Bell
“Chances are there are some things that trigger your tendencies to procrastinate. It is important you identify these things. And if possible, get rid of them.” – John Morgan
“By what right do I, who have wasted this day, make claims on tomorrow?” – Alain-Fournier
“By thinking of procrastination as the result of a human tendency to live too much in the moment, we can devise better strategies for overcoming it. If the problem is weighing present versus future costs and benefits, we need to find a way to either bring future benefits closer to the present or to magnify the costs of delayed action.” – Ray Fisman
“By one delay after another they spin out their whole lives, till there’s no more future left for them.” – Robert L’Estrange
“Believe me, ‘I shall live’ is not the saying of a wise man. Tomorrow’s life is too late: live today.” – Martial
“All things come to those who wait, but when they come they’re out of date.” – Anonymous
“A year from now you may wish you had started today.” – Karen Lamb
“A task left undone remains undone in two places — at the actual location of the task, and inside your head. Incomplete tasks in your head consume the energy of your attention as they gnaw at your conscience.” – Brahma Kumaris
“A primary reason people don’t do new things is because they want to do them perfectly – first time. It’s completely irrational, impractical, not workable – and yet, it’s how most people run their lives. It’s called The Perfection Syndrome.” – Peter McWilliams and John Roger
“A primary reason people don’t do new things is because they want to do them perfectly – first time. It’s completely irrational, impractical, not workable – and yet, it’s how most people run their lives. It’s called The Perfection Syndrome.” – John-Roger and Peter McWlliams
“A perfect method for adding drama to life is to wait until the deadline looms large.” – Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby
“A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance.” – Hunter S. Thompson
“A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.” – Mark Twain
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” – George S. Patton
“A dream written down with a date becomes a goal. A goal broken down into steps becomes a plan. A plan backed by action makes your dreams come true.” – Greg S. Reid
“A day can really slip by when you’re deliberately avoiding what you’re supposed to do.” – Bill Watterson
In Conclusion
We hope these procrastination quotes remind you that everyone sometimes finds it hard to focus. As you can see from reading all of these quotes, procrastination is nothing new, and many intelligent and talented people have been struggling with it for a long, long time.
But all it takes to turn things around is to get started! As the old saying goes, “the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, but the second-best time is NOW.” It’s never too late to overcome your procrastination tendencies and accomplish incredible things in your life.
Which of these helpful procrastination quotes resonated the most with you? Drop a comment here before you accomplish that project that you were trying to avoid. I believe in you!