Get Back on Track with these 118 Quotes About Procrastination
Procrastination is the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished. The word derives from the Latin verb “procrastinare“, which translates into: the prefix pro-, ‘forward’, and the suffix -crastinus, ’till next day’ from cras, ‘tomorrow’. How does postponing everything affect our lives? The following procrastination quotes will let us know.
Procrastination can take hold on any aspect of life and it can lead to feelings of guilt, inadequacy, depression, and self-doubt. The truth is that everyone procrastinates: putting things off is part of being human. It is critical to examine the consequences of procrastination, both external and internal, in order to evaluate whether it is a problem in one’s life. More often than not, procrastination is indeed a problem for many.
According to new research from Joseph Ferrari at DePaul University, procrastination is more complicated than most people think. People tend to think of procrastination as coming from poor time management or laziness, but Ferrari’s research shows that procrastination stems from negative emotions that hijack one’s mood. People usually put things off because they aren’t in the right mood to complete the task and this sets off the procrastination doom loop. Not being in the right mood to work, people distract themselves with other tasks and then they feel guilty for having wasted so much time. This only worsens one’s mood, and as the deadline draws closer, people feel worse than they did when they first put off the task.
In order to escape the Doom Loop of procrastination one must take control of their mood. Ferrari suggests to figure out why we procrastinate, remove the obstacles that get in our way and finally jump right in the task at hand. The remedy for procrastination is action and hopefully the following quotes will inspire and motivate you.
Table of Contents
- Short Procrastination Quotes
- Motivational Quotes About Procrastination
- Funny Procrastination Quotes
- Unexpected Quotes About Procrastination
- Cynical Procrastination Quotes
- Insightful Quotes About Procrastination
- Intellectual Procrastination Quotes
- Poetic Procrastination Quotes
- Procrastination Quotes On Images
Short Procrastination Quotes
- Stop talking. Start walking. M. Heroux
- You may delay, but time will not. Benjamin Franklin
- Don’t procrastinate, start building yourself now! Sunday Adelaja
- One of these days, is none of these days. Proverb
- Procrastination is opportunity’s assassin. Victor Kiam
- Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. Marthe Troly-Curtin, Phrynette Married
- What is deferred is not avoided. Thomas More
- Delay not to seize the hour! Aeschylus
- Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow. Steven Wright
- My biggest regret could be summed up in one word, and that’s procrastination. Ron Cooper
- The penalty for procrastination is the loss of hopes and dreams. Tai Lopez
- Procrastination is the foundation of all disasters. Pandora Poikilos
- Begin to weave and God will give you the thread. German Proverb
Motivational Quotes About Procrastination
- Begin doing what you want to do now. Marie Beynon Ray
- Never leave till tomorrow that which you can do today. Benjamin Franklin
- A year from now you may wish you had started today. Karen Lamb
- Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. Abraham Lincoln
- Begin while others are procrastinating. Work while others are wishing. William Arthur Ward
- Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. Napoleon Hill
- Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today. Holbrook Jackson
- Following-through is the only thing that separates dreamers from people that accomplish great things. Gene Hayden
- Sometimes the thing you dread doing is the very thing you should do, just so you can stop thinking about it. Marci Shimoff, Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul
- Begin things today so that they can finish tomorrow. Moonish Sood
- Don’t let procrastination take over your life. Be brave and take risks. Your life is happening right now. Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
- Whatever you are waiting for won’t come to you; you have to go for it. Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders’ Frontpage
- Stop killing and wasting time. Get something done today. Sunday Adelaja
- Ensure you have done each day’s portion of the heavy responsibilities resting on you. Never delay your success! Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders’ Frontpage
- To succeed in the new year, you have to set your priority right, pursue your goals with zeal and do away with procrastination. Bamigboye Olurotimi
- Know the true value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
Funny Procrastination Quotes
- Procrastinate now, don’t put it off. Ellen DeGeneres
- If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done. Rita Mae Brown
- Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well. Mark Twain
- Procrastination is like a credit card: it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill. Christopher Parker
- One can hardly do anything productive when one knows there is cake in the fridge. Joyce Rachelle
- Because I was in a bind with my BBC story, I devoted most of my day to defrosting the freezer. David Sedaris, Theft by Finding
- Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
- I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do the day after. Oscar Wilde
- Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday. Napoleon Hill
- I’m a big believer in putting things off, In fact, I even put off procrastinating. Lisa Kleypas, Smooth Talking Stranger
- I must catch up on procrastination. Brian Spellman
- If you ask me, reincarnation is just another way to procrastinate. Chuck Palahniuk
Unexpected Quotes About Procrastination
- Procrastination is your body telling you you need to back off a bit and think more about what you are doing. James Altucher
- I try to procrastinate, if I can, productively, like I’ll work on something else as procrastination. Or I take a walk. Because often I find, if you get out, more things come to you. Noah Baumbach
- Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. Scott Peck
- Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you. Hilary Mantel
- 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
- I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done. Susan Orlean
- It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
- Procrastination gives you time to consider divergent ideas, to think in nonlinear ways, to make unexpected leaps. Adam Grant
- I’m a procrastinator and a lazy person by nature. However, I require the laziness for greatness. Caspar Vega, Southern Dust
- 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
- Do you know what happens when you give a procrastinator a good idea? Nothing! Donald Gardner
Cynical Procrastination Quotes
- The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing. Alan Dean Foster
- Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone Pablo Picasso
- Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried. Unknown
- Working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination. Gretchen Rubin
- Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will tomorrow. Gloria Pitzer
- The scholar’s greatest weakness: calling procrastination research. Stephen King, 11/22/63
- If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it. George Bernard Shaw
- There is nothing so fatal to character as half finished tasks. David Lloyd George
- Don’t ask for directions if you’re not going to start the car. Rob Liano
- For instinct dictates our duty and the intellect supplies us with pretexts for evading it. Marcel Proust, Time Regained
- Put it off for a bit. All life is putting off. Well, not entirely. Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
- I swing between procrastination and being really thorough so either way things aren’t getting done quickly. Freema Agyeman
- Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy. Wayne Gretzky
- I have an advanced degree in procrastination and another one in paranoia. Joanne Harris
Insightful Quotes About Procrastination
- Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder. Mason Cooley
- You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. Abraham Lincoln
- It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. Leonardo da Vinci
- Procrastination is a sign of weak character. Carol Cox, Trouble in Store
- 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
- The more time you have to do things, the less you are able to get done. Joyce Rachelle
- I’ve never been a fan of pretense or procrastination. After all, our state is defined by its independent, outspoken spirit. Gavin Newsom
- To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing. Eva Young
- Often greater risk is involved in postponement than in making a wrong decision. Harry A. Hopf
- Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. William James
- Procrastination isn’t task management, it’s feeling management. Scott Ginsberg
- A day can really slip by when you’re deliberately avoiding what you’re supposed to do. Bill Watterson, There’s Treasure Everywhere
- If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it. Olin Miller
- We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate. Erica Jong, Seducing the Demon
- Procrastination is also a subtle act of corruption ― it corrupts valuable time. Amit Abraham
- 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
- Procrastination should not be linked with failure, just as early action should not be tied to success. Mary Lamia
- Sometimes the only things preventing your dreams from becoming realities is the long time it is taking you to start. Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders’ Frontpage
- The man who waits to know everything is the man who never does anything. Craig D. Lounsbrough
- Fight your fear, your laziness, your ignorance before you worry about fighting the competition. Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
- 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
- A procrastinators willpower lies in the fact that he keeps work pending because he strongly feels he wants to do the same – keep it pending. Amit Abraham
- For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It’s the procrastination, the thinking about writing that’s difficult. Adam Mansbach
Intellectual Procrastination Quotes
- Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. Scott Peck
- 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
- God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination. Augustine of Hippo
- Hesitation is often like procrastination. One may have vague doubts and feel a need to mull things over; meanwhile, other issues intrude on thought, and no decision is taken. Ask people why they procrastinate, and you probably won’t get a crisp answer. Robert J. Shiller
- One of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivity are also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we’re idling in front of our computer screens. Joshua Foer
- Academics, who work for long periods in a self-directed fashion, may be especially prone to putting things off: surveys suggest that the vast majority of college students procrastinate, and articles in the literature of procrastination often allude to the author’s own problems with finishing the piece. James Surowiecki
- 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
- I, for one, find writing excruciating. Some mornings, as I’m on my way to my desk, my hands actually tremble with fear. The fear, of course, is that I’ll sit down at the desk and discover that what I’ve written is claptrap. Fear inevitably leads to procrastination. Rosemary Mahoney
- 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
- 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
- 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
Poetic Procrastination Quotes
- You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday. Don Marquis
- Success is not obtained overnight. It comes in installments; 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
- When there is a hill to climb, don’t think that waiting will make it smaller. Author Unknown
- If and When were planted, and Nothing grew. Proverb
- 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
- My life is a monument to procrastination, to the art of putting things off until later, or much later, or possibly never. Craig Brown
- Getting an idea should be like sitting on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something. L. Simpson
- You can dance in the storm. Don’t wait for the rain to be over before because it might take too long. You can can do it now. Wherever you are, right now, you can start, right now; this very moment. Israelmore Ayivor
- My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry ’til a more convenient season. Mary Todd Lincoln
- If you want to be certain, you should never get married. You should never change jobs. In fact, you might as well just stay home. Because I don’t know anybody who is certain. That need to be certain is just procrastination. Mark Burnett
- You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind. Author Unknown
- A good procrastination should feel like you’re inserting lots and lots of commas into the sentence of your life. Ze Frank
- Dream big as you can and shoot for the stars, but get started even if its small baby steps, they count! Lucas D. Shallua
- 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
- The distance between your Dreams and Reality is inversely proportional to your Efforts. Vineet Raj Kapoor
- How easy it is to slip.
How hard it is to climb.
How wise it is to keep in step
And never fall behind.
Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
Procrastination Quotes On Images
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