In the hustle and bustle of daily life, procrastination often gets a bad rap. However, what if we flipped the narrative and explored the hidden inspiration behind those moments of delay? This collection of 91 inspiring procrastination quotes aims to do just that. From the insightful musings of famous thinkers to the witty remarks of modern-day creatives, these quotes shed light on the unexpected wisdom that can be found in taking a pause. Whether you're seeking a motivational nudge or a fresh perspective on productivity, these quotes will inspire you to embrace the art of procrastination with newfound appreciation. Dive into this curated collection and discover how a little delay can sometimes lead to great ideas.
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. “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.” - Mark Twain
3. “You may delay, but time will not.” - Benjamin Franklin
4. “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
5. “Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.” - Charles Dickens
6. “Never postpone until tomorrow what you can postpone until the day after.” - Raoul Wallenberg
7. “As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.” - Paul Rudnick
8. “Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today.” - Aaron Burr
9. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone” - Pablo Picasso
10. “If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.” - Rita Mae Brown
11. “Procrastinate now, don't put it off.” - Ellen DeGeneres
12. “I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after.” - Oscar Wilde
13. “What is deferred is not avoided.” - Sir Thomas More
14. “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
15. “Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” - Holbrook Jackson
16. “The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.” - Alan Dean Foster
17. “God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.” - St. Augustine of Hippo
18. “Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.” - Steven Wright
19. “My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!” - Charles Dickens
20. “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
21. “You guys like to tell jokes and giggle and kid around, huh? Giggling like a bunch of young broads in a school yard. Well, let me tell you a joke: Five guys sitting in a bull pen, San Quentin. Wondering how the fuck they got there. What'd we do wrong? What should we've done? What didn't we do? It's your fault, my fault, his fault. All that bullshit. Finally, someone comes up with the idea, wait a minute, while we were planning this caper, all we did was sit around and tell fucking jokes. Got the message?” - Quentin Tarantino
22. “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 Jr.
23. “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
24. “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
25. “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
26. “I'm a big believer in putting things off, In fact, I even put off procrastinating.-Ella Varner” - Lisa Kleypas
27. “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
28. “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
29. “Someday is not a day of the week.” - Janet Dailey
30. “Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.” - Otto von Bismarck
31. “Identifying Your DreamSome people can easily identify one primary dream. For others, a dream is more elusive. These people often have many dreams at once, or a general idea of a dream that never takes a specific shape.” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)
32. “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)
33. “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)
34. “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)
35. “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)
36. “Building your "dream life" is filled with things that can feel like the opposite of a dream:MistakesDelaysStarting overFailureThe building part is actually more of a rebuilding that is a continual process. The building is not linear in nature but far more interesting. You might start a creative dream, take the "next step", and find yourself completely bored, dissatisfied, or just not inspired. ” - Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy (SARK)
37. “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)
38. “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
39. “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
40. “My mother always told me I wouldn't amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, 'Just wait.” - Judy Tenuta
41. “Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will--tomorrow” - Gloria Pitzer
42. “However, Nick acted as much as possible under the circumstances, and that was rectifying — it brought with it enjoyment and a working faith. He had not gone counter to the axiom that in a case of doubt one was to hold off; for that applied to choice, and he had not at present the slightest pretension to choosing. He knew he was lifted along, that what he was doing was not first-rate, that nothing was settled by it and that if there was essentially a problem in his life it would only grow tougher with keeping. But if doing one's sum to-morrow instead of to-day does not make the sum easier it at least makes to-day so.” - Henry James
43. “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” - Leonardo da Vinci
44. “Every duty that is bidden to wait comes back with seven fresh duties at its back.” - Charles Kingsley
45. “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
46. “Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone. More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp. It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind. (“Mad House”)” - Richard Matheson
47. “Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.” - Geoff Dyer
48. “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
49. “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.” - Dr. Amit Abraham
50. “The scholar's greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.” - Stephen King
51. “It must take a lot of self-discipline,' she said. 'Oh, I don't know. I don't have much.' He felt himself about to say again, and unable to resist saying, that 'Dumas, I think it was Dumas, some terrifically prolific Frenchman, said that writing novels is a simple matter - if you write one page a day, you'll write one novel a year, two pages a day, two novels a year, three pages, three novels, and so on. And how long does it take to cover a page with writing? Twenty minutes? An hour? So you see. Very easy really.''I don't know,' she said, laughing. 'I can't even bring myself to write a letter.' 'Oh, now that's hard.'("Novelty")” - John Crowley
52. “Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.” - Oscar Wilde
53. “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
54. “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
55. “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
56. “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
57. “We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.” - Erica Jong
58. “You can put off your dreams, your desires, your careers, your farms. You can avoid your responsibilities, obligations, promises, and sovereign rights. But any person who wants to make music, and doesn't, is a goddamned fool.” - Jenna Woginrich
59. “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
60. “The funny thing about my procrastination was that I was almost done with the screenplay. I was like a person who had fought dragons and lost limbs and crawled through swamps and now, finally, the castle was visible. I could see tiny children waving flags on the balcony; all I had to do was walk across a field to get to them. But all of a sudden I was very, very sleepy. And the children couldn't believe their eyes as I folded down to my knees and fell to the ground face-first, with my eyes open. Motionless, I watched ants hurry in and out of a hole and I knew that standing up again would be a thousand times harder than the dragon or the swamp and so I did not even try. I just clicked on one thing after another after another.” - Miranda July
61. “That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.” - Charles Dickens
62. “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
63. “Get back to work, he would tell himself sternly. There's a garuda to get airborne.” - China Miéville
64. “Put it off for a bit. All life is putting off. Well, not entirely.” - Anthony Burgess
65. “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
66. “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
67. “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
68. “Look, my dad has a saying - we'll burn that bridge when get to it. OK? You get it? Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.” - Barry Lyga
69. “To procrastinate obedience is to disobey God.” - Randy Alcorn
70. “Let's take care of the little things while they're still little.” - John G. Miller
71. “If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” - Olin Miller
72. “During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I had been on a trip. I almost never get this feeling any other way. I once spent sixteen hours making 150 wedding invitations by hand and was not for one instance of that time tempted to eat or look at my watch. By contrast, if seated at the computer, I check my email conservatively 30,000 times a day. When I am writing, I must have a snack, call a friend, or abuse myself every ten minutes. I used to think that this was nothing more than the difference between those things we do for love and those we do for money. But that can't be the whole story. I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was always difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick.” - David Rakoff
73. “Whatever actions you take, keep in mind that over the course of life, you will fail far more from timidity, procrastination, and carefulness than you will from just stepping up to the plate and, as we say in Australia, giving it a bloody go!” - Margie Warrell
74. “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
75. “If you fail to believe you will procrastinate or become idealustic about how awesome you are at working hard and managing your time, you never develop a strategy for outmaneuvering your own weakness.” - David McRaney
76. “Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more willpower or drive, but because they know productivity is a game played against a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty that can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push-ups.” - David McRaney
77. “A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.” - Bill Watterson
78. “If and perhaps.... The language of procrastination and uncertainty. That's just people looking to justify their own lack of action.” - John Flanagan
79. “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
80. “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
81. “Don't try to leave for there's so very much to do, and you still have over eight hundred years to go on the first job.' 'But why do only unimportant things?' 'Think of all the trouble it saves. If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing.” - Norton Juster
82. “Procrastination is not Laziness", I tell him. "It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.” - Julia Cameron
83. “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
84. “Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone.” - Shannon L. Alder
85. “Nothing says work efficiency like panic mode.” - Don Roff
86. “How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve the world.” - Anne Frank
87. “It's time to stop following your dreams and time to start chasing them!” - Habeeb Akande
88. “If you ask me, reincarnation is just another way to procrastinate.” - Chuck Palahniuk
89. “Let's make progress, not excuses.” - Justin Cotillard
90. “Do what you know needs to be done.” - Lynda A. Calder
91. “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
