62 Inspiring Procrastination Quotes

In a world where productivity is often hailed as the ultimate virtue, the art of procrastination is frequently misunderstood. Yet, hidden within those moments of delay and reflection can be profound inspiration and valuable insights. Whether you're putting off a task or simply indulging in a moment of respite, procrastination can be a source of creativity and motivation if harnessed correctly. This collection of 62 inspiring quotes is designed to offer a fresh perspective on procrastination, celebrating its potential to fuel imagination, encourage mindfulness, and ignite a spark of genius in the most unexpected of times. Explore these quotes and find solace in the idea that sometimes, waiting can be the most productive thing you do all day.

1. “I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.” - Margaret Mitchell

2. “Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” - Charles Dickens

3. “Never postpone until tomorrow what you can postpone until the day after.” - Raoul Wallenberg

4. “Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today.” - Aaron Burr

5. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone” - Pablo Picasso

6. “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

7. “It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon” - Oscar Wilde

8. “Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” - Holbrook Jackson

9. “Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.” - Steven Wright

10. “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

11. “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

12. “He had seen me several times, and had intended to call on me long before, but a peculiar combination of circumstances had prevented it.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

13. “But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still - very wonderful things have happened!” - George Eliot

14. “Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal, while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before” - Herodotus

15. “I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now." "Then put it on hold." This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.” - Saul Bellow

16. “Someday is not a day of the week.” - Janet Dailey

17. “Why Dream?Life is a difficult assignment. We are fragile creatures, expected to function at high rates of speed, and asked to accomplish great and small things each day. These daily activities take enormous amounts of energy. Most things are out of our control. We are surrounded by danger, frustration, grief, and insanity as well as love, hope, ecstasy, and wonder. Being fully human is an exercise in humility, suffering, grace, and great humor. Things and people all around us die, get broken, or are lost. There is no safety or guarantees.The way to accomplish the assignment of truly living is to engage fully, richly, and deeply in the living of your dreams. We are made to dream and to live those dreams.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

18. “This imaginary gift is a journey for your imagination.I send you...A luxury train ride. On this train are all the inspiring people you've ever wanted to meet or talk to. You glide from car to car, sitting or lying down on velvet lounge chairs, listening and asking questions. There is also a voluminous library on the train, with every book you've ever wanted to read or look at. Kind people bring you delicious tidbits to eat and nourishing liquids to drink. If you take a nap, time stands still until you return so you never miss anything. You receive a large journal filled with photographs, drawings and descriptions of your journey to take with you when you leave. You realize that you can board this train at any time.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

19. “Inside CriticsThe critical voices in our own heads are far more vicious than what we might hear from the outside. Our "inside critics" have intimate knowledge of us and can zero in on our weakest spots. You might be told by the critics that you're too fat, too old, too young, not intelligent enough, a quitter, not logical, prone to try too many things...It's all balderdash!Some elements of these may be true, and it's completely up to you how they affect you. Inside critics are really just trying to protect you. You can:Learn to dialogue with them.Give them new jobs.Turn them into allies.You can also dismantle/exterminate them.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

20. “Inside" ChildrenInside each of us are the children we were at each developmental stage. With regard to our creative dreams, these inside children can prevent us from living them by "acting out" in order to try to get our attention. Your inner 5-year-old is not going to patiently wait as you learn intricate metalworking techniques or study impressionist painting. Yet, your inner 10-year-old may be perfectly suited to learn and observe new skills.What's really needed is parenting of these inside children so that we bring them to age-appropriate activities.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

21. “Our creative dreams are subject to grudge-holding when we decide that other people somehow have made their dreams real and we have not.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

22. “Initially, I feel expansive when I try something new, and then contract as soon as I encounter difficulty or the unknown. I am learning to experiment with my tolerance of difficulty and the not knowing, in order to go further with my creative dreams.Whenever I experience contraction, I explore it by asking, "Where did I stop and why?" Building a creative dream life is not just about achieving, succeeding, or "meeting goals." It is also about floundering, stumbling, tripping and failing. ” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)

23. “From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in Future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out.We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out. ” - Ray Bradbury

24. “Absolutely not. I'm an expert in procrastination, but the last thing I want you to think is that I'm incompetent, too. Because I'm actually pretty good at what I do.” - Nicholas Sparks

25. “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

26. “My mother always told me I wouldn't amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, 'Just wait.” - Judy Tenuta

27. “Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will--tomorrow” - Gloria Pitzer

28. “Procrastination is the foundation of all disasters.” - Pandora Poikilos

29. “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” - Leonardo da Vinci

30. “Every duty that is bidden to wait comes back with seven fresh duties at its back.” - Charles Kingsley

31. “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

32. “But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.” - George Eliot

33. “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

34. “The scholar's greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.” - Stephen King

35. “Do you write every day?' 'Oh, no. Oh, I sort of try. I don't work very hard, really. Really I'm on vacation. All the time. Or you could say I work all the time, too. It comes to the same thing.' He'd said all this before, to others; he wondered if he'd said it to her. 'It's like weekend homework. Remember? There wasn't ever a time you absolutely had to do it - there was always Saturday, then Sunday - but then there wasn't ever a time when it wasn't there to do, too.' 'How awful.' ("Novelty")” - John Crowley

36. “Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.” - Oscar Wilde

37. “Had I been less firmly resolved upon settling down definitively to work, I should perhaps have made an effort to begin at once. But since my resolution was explicit, since within twenty-four hours, in the empty frame of the following day where everything was so well-arranged because I myself was not yet in it, my good intention would be realized without difficulty, it was better not to start on an evening when I felt ill-prepared. The following days were not, alas, to prove more propitious. But I was reasonable. It would have been puerile, on the part of one who had waited now for years, not to put up with a postponement of two or three days. Confident that by the day after tomorrow I should have written several pages, I said not a word more to my parents of my decision; I preferred to remain patient and then to bring to a convinced and comforted grandmother a sample of work that was already under way. Unfortunately the next day was not that vast, extraneous expanse of time to which I had feverishly looked forward. When it drew to a close, my laziness and my painful struggle to overcome certain internal obstacles had simply lasted twenty-four hours longer. And at the end of several days, my plans not having matured, I had no longer the same hope that they would be realized at once, and hence no longer the heart to subordinate everything else to their realization: I began once again to keep late hours...” - Marcel Proust

38. “Habitual procrastinators will readily testify to all the lost opportunities, missed deadlines, failed relationships and even monetary losses incurred just because of one nasty habit of putting things off until it is often too late.” - Stephen Richards

39. “Both positive and negative thinking are contagious.” - Stephen Richards

40. “I generally find,' Clent murmured after a pause, 'that it is best to treat borrowed time the same way as borrowed money. Spend it with panache, and try to be somewhere else when it runs out.' 'And when we get found, Mr. Clent, when the creditors and bailiffs come after us and it's payment time...' '...then we borrow more, madam, at a higher interest. We embark on a wilder gamble, make a bigger promise, tell a braver story, devise a more intricate lie, sell the hides of imaginary dragons to desperate men, climb to even higher and more precarious ground...and later, of course, our fall and catastrophe will be all the worse, but later will be our watchword, Mosca. We have nothing else - but we can at least make later later.” - Frances Hardinge

41. “You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase) a diminished Impressibility from Things, my ideas, wishes, & feelings are to a diseased degree disconnected from motion & action. In plain and natural English, I am a dreaming & therefore an indolent man. I am a Starling self-incaged, & always in the Moult, & my whole Note is, Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

42. “He saw it for the first time: on the day he died he would be wearing unmatching socks, there would be unanswered e-mails, and in the hovel he called home there would still be shirts missing cuff buttons, a malfunctioning light in the hall, and unpaid bills, uncleared attics, dead flies, friends waiting for a reply and lovers he had not owned up to.” - Ian McEwan

43. “The Queen, bless her heart, has cultivated procrastination to a degree which is really an art--when one is vexed, as I fear I often am, one should recall that the Bowes Lyons are the laziest family in the world. Against this reflection it becomes remarkable that she accomplishes so much.” - Arthur Penn

44. “If you are always saying I'll do it to tomorrow, than your tomorrow will than turn into another day and so on, and so, etc. etc.” - Victoria Addino

45. “A man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.” - George Eliot

46. “This idea comes to you, you can see it, but to accomplish it you need what I call a "setup." For example, you may need a working shop or a working painting studio. You may beed a working music studio. Or a computer room where you can write something. It's crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen. If you don't have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. And the idea just sits there and festers. Overtime, it will go away. You didn't filfill it--and that's just a heartache.” - David Lynch

47. “To procrastinate obedience is to disobey God.” - Randy Alcorn

48. “Let's take care of the little things while they're still little.” - John G. Miller

49. “If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” - Olin Miller

50. “Charity knew she had to begin looking for a job soon. Definitely tomorrow, or the next day. Or perhaps the day after that. Charity didn't believe in procrastination. She just needed to plan her strategy. She was sound asleep on the sofa when Lady Margaret got back from London.” - Elizabeth Jane Howard

51. “A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.” - Bill Watterson

52. “If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you'll find you've done it.” - George Bernard Shaw

53. “If and perhaps.... The language of procrastination and uncertainty. That's just people looking to justify their own lack of action.” - John Flanagan

54. “Q: When is the perfect time? A: Who can say, but probably somewhere between haste and delay - and it's usually most wise to start today.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

55. “With no sums to keep his conscience at bay, the black book loomed large, creeping into his line of sight.He scanned the room for something else to do. The harness still needed work. And he'd been meaning to fix that rickety shelf since last month. The pipe on his potbellied stove was dented. The windowsill needed dusting.Dusting?J.T. braced his arms on the desk and pressed his forehead into the heels of his hands.” - Karen Witemeyer

56. “I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.” - Robin Sloan

57. “We must remember balance and moderation. Patience can be spiritually enriching and virtuous… but when taken in excess, it turns to procrastination, the poison of inaction.” - Steve Maraboli

58. “Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone.” - Shannon L. Alder

59. “No more excuses or procrastination! Stop allowing your days to be stolen by busy nothingness and take calculated steps towards your goals.” - Steve Maraboli

60. “I know love is begun by time,And that I see, in passages of proof,Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.There lives within the very flame of loveA kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.And nothing is at a like goodness still.For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,We should do when we would, for this “would” changesAnd hath abatements and delays as manyAs there are tongues, are hands, are accidents.And then this “should” is like a spendthrift sighThat hurts by easing.” - William Shakespeare

61. “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

62. “The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance.This second, we can sit down and do our work.” - Steven Pressfield