Why Read These 55+ Procrastination Quotes Today When You Can Read Them Tomorrow

Take your cheugy “Live, Laugh, Love” sign and replace it with “We live. We breathe. We procrastinate.” That’s right, no matter who you are, what your work ethic is, or how much of a Type A personality you claim to be, you are still guilty of procrastination. Our good friends at Merriem-Webster define procrastination as putting something off “intentionally and habitually,” and if there ever was a perfect description of every college student ever this is it. We all remember delaying unpleasant tasks (read papers, tests, projects, studying, etc.) for as long as possible and then pulling all-nighters to get them done last minute. Unfortunately, bad habits die hard, so many of us take our propensity for procrastination into adulthood and our careers, which causes stress and brings with it a slew of other physical symptoms.

How common and bad is procrastination? Here are some stats:

• According to a 2007 study, approximately 80 to 95 percent of college students said they engage in procrastination to some degree while about 50 percent say that they procrastinate in a consistent and problematic manner. And this was before social media was as prevalent as today.
• Another study revealed roughly 74 percent of adults surveyed indicated they go to bed later than at least once a week, for no external reason.
• Yet another survey revealed 94 percent of people indicated that procrastination has a negative effect on their happiness

So why do we do it? Why do we procrastinate, knowing we will have to pay for it later, stress out about the thing we are putting off the whole time leading up to it, and potentially sabotage ourselves by half-assing the task at hand. Well, because we don’t want to do it, we’re afraid we’ll fail, and we don’t feel confident about whatever it is that should get done.

To make sure you don’t feel alone in your procrastination journey, we have rounded up the best, most poignant, and sometimes funny procrastination quotes to help you procrastinate even more. But, you know, you can just read them tomorrow.

1. “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.” — Mark Twain
2. “You may delay, but time will not.” — Benjamin Franklin “Procrastinate now, don’t put it off.” — Ellen DeGeneres
3. “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” — Marthe Troly-Curtin
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. “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.” — Margaret Mitchell
6. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” — Pablo Picasso
7. “My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!” — Charles Dickens
8. “I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do – the day after.” — Oscar Wilde
9. “A year from now you may wish you had started today.” — Karen Lamb
10. “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” — Abraham Lincoln
11. “If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.” — Rita Mae Brown
12. “It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” — Leonardo da Vinci
13. “God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.” — St. Augustine of Hippo
14. “Someday is not a day of the week.” — Janet Dailey
15. “Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.” — Holbrook Jackson
16. “The scholar’s greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.” — Stephen King
17. “Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today.” — Aaron Burr
18. “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
19. “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
20. “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
21. “If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.” — George Bernard Shaw
22. “The problem with procrastination is it’s been around since the beginning of time it seems.” — Stephen Richards,
23. “In your actions, don’t procrastinate. In your conversations, don’t confuse. In your thoughts, don’t wander. In your soul, don’t be passive or aggressive. In your life, don’t be all about business.” — Marcus Aurelius
24. “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 tomorrow.” — George Eliot
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. “What is deferred is not avoided.” — Sir Thomas More
27. “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
28. “Too much freedom can lead to the development of indiscipline.” — Neeraj Agnihotri
29. “When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that in itself is a choice.” — William James
30. “If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” — Olin Miller
31. “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
32. “How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never.'” — Martin Luther
33. “In a moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing to do, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” — Theodore Roosevelt
34. “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” — Stephen King
35. “If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.” — David Allen
36. “Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
37. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
38. “Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.” — Dale Carnegie
39. “Think of many things; do one.” — Portuguese proverb
40. “To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.” — Eva Young
41. “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” — Jim Rohn
42. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” — Anne Frank
43. “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 a responsibility with it, it is much easier to procrastinate and live on the ‘someday I’ll’ philosophy.” — Denis Waitley
44. “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
45. “Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker
46. “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus” — Alexander Graham Bell
47. “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” — David Allen
48. “Great acts are made up of small deeds.” — Lao Tzu
49. “It is not really work if you are having fun.” — Pierre Omidyar
50. “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
51. “In delay there lies no plenty.” — William Shakespeare
52. “You cannot begin until you begin.” — Tony Cleaver, A Chain of Flames
53. “Procrastination isn’t task management, it’s feeling management.” — Scott Ginsberg
54. “Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will — tomorrow.” — Gloria Pitzer
55. “‘Procrastination is not laziness,’ I tell him. ‘It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.'” — Julia Cameron, The Prosperous Heart
56. “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