Procrastination Sayings Quotes

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.

Procrastination is not the problem. It is the solution. It is the universe's way of saying stop, slow down, you move too fast. Listen to the music. Whoa whoa, listen to the music. Because music makes the people come together, it makes the bourgeois and the rebel. So come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody try to love one another. Because what the world needs now is love, sweet love. And I know that love is a battlefield, but boogie on reggae woman because you're gonna make it after all. So celebrate good times, come on. I've gotta stop I've gotta come to my senses, I've been out riding fences for so long... oops I did it again... um... What I'm trying to say is, if you leave tonight and you don't remember anything else that I've said, leave here and remember this: Procrastinate now, don't put it off.

If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first." This is another way of saying that if you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first.

Nothing says work efficiency like panic mode.

I once heard a sober alcoholic say that drinking never made him happy, but it made him feel like he was going to be happy in about fifteen minutes. That was exactly it, and I couldn’t understand why the happiness never came, couldn’t see the flaw in my thinking, couldn’t see that alcohol kept me trapped in a world of illusion, procrastination, paralysis. I lived always in the future, never in the present. Next time, next time! Next time I drank it would be different, next time it would make me feel good again. And all my efforts were doomed, because already drinking hadn’t made me feel good in years.

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.

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. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you're procrastinating on as passing weather, you'll realise that your reluctance about working isn't something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.

They say, timing is everything. But then they say, there is never a perfect time for anything.

They say, "Look before you leap." So look. But do not look for too long. Do not look into the void of uncertainty trying to predict each and every possible outcome, to evaluate every possible mistake, to prevent each possible failure. Look for the opportunity to leap, and leap faster than your fear can grab you. Leap before you talk yourself out of it, before you convince yourself to set up a temporary camp that turns into a permanent delay on your journey into your own heart.

Addiction, self-sabotage, procrastination, laziness, rage, chronic fatigue, and depression are all ways that we withhold our full participation in the program of life we are offered. When the conscious mind cannot find a reason to say no, the unconscious says no in its own way.

The law of Forced Efficiency says that "There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.

Look, my dad has a saying - we'll burn that bridge when get to it. OK? You get it? Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

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.

My Dutch grandfather used to say, ‘If you don’t know what to do, do nothing for eight days.’ ” Dean asked, “Why eight?” “Less than eight is haste. More than eight is procrastination. Eight days is long enough for the world to shuffle the deck and deal you another hand.

There is an old saying that "by the yard it's hard; but inch by inch, anything's a cinch!

Actually believe in your potential. You spend all day and all night daydreaming and sometimes talking to yourself... out loud, which people can see by the way so maybe consider stopping that, about all the things you wish you could be and do, but instead you doubt yourself and say its impossible, and instead of following your unrealistic dreams, you should accept that you're an average person that will never get lucky and should just do what the world seems to have laid out for you like.. study law at University. That's not gonna go down well, just trust me there. You are a horrific procrastinator and one day you will just mature enough to look past what you have been told about the world, and decide to take it into your own hands, and that will finally make you happy.

If the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is eat a live frog, then nothing worse can happen for the rest of the day!" Brian Tracy says that your "frog" should be the most difficult item on your things-to-do list, the one you're most likely to procrastinate on; because, if you eat that first, it'll give you energy and momentum for the rest of the day. But, if you don't...if you let him sit there on the plate and stare at you while you do a hundred unimportant things, it can drain your energy and you won't even know it.

Say no to anything that is not a high-value use of your time and your life.

Information overload (on all levels) is exactly WHY you need an "ignore list". It has never been more important to be able to say "No

...it always felt good to have that moment of resolve, like saying, "I'm gonna learn French!" It doesn't matter if you do it or not, deciding is the high, right?

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.

In life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your problems. If the possibility of failure were erased, what would you attempt to achieve? The essence of man is imperfection. Know that you're going to make mistakes. The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. Wake up and realize this: Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business. When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic. Procrastination is too high a price to pay for fear of failure. To conquer fear, you have to feel the fear and take action anyway. Forget motivation. Just do it. Act your way into feeling, not wait for positive emotions to carry you forward. Recognize that you will spend much of your life making mistakes. If you can take action and keep making mistakes, you gain experience. Life is playing a poor hand well. The greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside. Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you? Handicaps can only disable us if we let them. If you are continually experiencing trouble or facing obstacles, then you should check to make sure that you are not the problem. Be more concerned with what you can give rather than what you can get because giving truly is the highest level of living. Embrace adversity and make failure a regular part of your life. If you're not failing, you're probably not really moving forward. Everything in life brings risk. It's true that you risk failure if you try something bold because you might miss it. But you also risk failure if you stand still and don't try anything new. The less you venture out, the greater your risk of failure. Ironically the more you risk failure — and actually fail — the greater your chances of success. If you are succeeding in everything you do, then you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. And that means you're not taking enough risks. You risk because you have something of value you want to achieve. The more you do, the more you fail. The more you fail, the more you learn. The more you learn, the better you get. Determining what went wrong in a situation has value. But taking that analysis another step and figuring out how to use it to your benefit is the real difference maker when it comes to failing forward. Don't let your learning lead to knowledge; let your learning lead to action. The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed, or did you fail because you stopped trying? Commitment makes you capable of failing forward until you reach your goals. Cutting corners is really a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline. Successful people have learned to do what does not come naturally. Nothing worth achieving comes easily. The only way to fail forward and achieve your dreams is to cultivate tenacity and persistence. Never say die. Never be satisfied. Be stubborn. Be persistent. Integrity is a must. Anything worth having is worth striving for with all your might. If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it. Success is in the journey, the continual process. And no matter how hard you work, you will not create the perfect plan or execute it without error. You will never get to the point that you no longer make mistakes, that you no longer fail. The next time you find yourself envying what successful people have achieved, recognize that they have probably gone through many negative experiences that you cannot see on the surface. Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.

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!

Narcissists (and often, by contagion, their unfortunate victims) don't talk, or communicate: they fend off, hide and evade . . . [They] perfect the ability of saying nothing in lengthy Castro-like speeches. Their locution is impregnated with first person pronouns ("I", "me", "my", "mine" - aka "high pronoun density"). The ensuing convoluted sentences are .. a lack of commitment elevated to an ideology. The narcissist prefers to wait and see what procrastination brings: postponement of the inevitable leads to the inevitability of postponement as a strategy of survival.

Refuse to complain about your problems. Keep them to yourself. As speaker-humorist Ed Foreman says, "You should never share your problems with others because 80 percent of people don't care about them anyway, and the other 20 percent are kind of glad that you've got them in the first place.

No more procrastinating. As grandpa used to say, “Cleaning a fish don’t get any more pleasant for having put the task off.

Never procrastinate. Never say you’ll do it tomorrow or the next day. Slow workers never fill their barns. Neither do procrastinators. Diligence does the job.

Remember to avoid self-criticism about setbacks or obstacles that appear in the midst of your project. As management consultant Michael Durst says, “You may not be responsible for causing what happens to you, but you are responsible for what you do to correct it.” This powerful message contains a crucial concept that many people miss: let go of worrying about the initial cause of the problem so that you can direct your energies to where they can do the most good—on the solution.

Mr Mowett,' called Stephen in the pause while the table was clearing to make room for the pudding, and pudding-wine—in this case Frontignan and Canary—was handing about, 'you were telling me about your publishers.'    'Yes, sir: I was about to say that they were the most hellish procrastinators—'    'Oh how dreadful,' cried Fanny. 'Do they go to—to special houses, or do they ...'    'He means they delay,' said Babbington.    'Oh.

You put things off and then one morning you wake up and say—today I will change the oil in my truck.

Regret is failure to act in accordance with what your heart is saying to you

Digging for diamonds is smarter than waiting for them to surface.

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")

Erasmus’s The Praise of Folly. According to a footnote, the argument of the growing heap is: If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally, you will have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so.

RESISTANCE AND PROCRASTINATION   Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say, “I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.

Can you imagine? You’re on your deathbed, and you’re saying this to your family: “I’m glad I watched so many FAIL compilations on YouTube.” Nope. You’ll probably look back and reflect on the time you spent with your family or friends. Or the memories you made when you were traveling. Or how much you enjoyed your work.

If you look at the ordinary people, you will find that they are all living passively, they always say much more than they do, or even do nothing. But almost all of them are good at finding excuses, they will find various excuse to procrastinate until they finally prove that this matter should not be, unable to or it is too late to be done.

I read these biographies all the time about these successful people and one of the patterns that I've discovered, and what I've discovered in myself and all of my friends who have become very successful, has been the fact that they say "Yes" to a lot of commitments. If you just have this one goal, then that one thing may get shoved under the rug and procrastinated on. But if you say yes to a lot of things; if you almost overcommit, then you probably won't get all of the things you've committed to complete. But you'll get a good portion of them. The 80% that you DO get done will still be more than that one person who said no to a lot of things. The busiest people get the most things done.

Now-people” are winners; they say “now” and they do it “now”! Do not delay.

There is a valid reason why they say live everyday as if it were your last, the truth is...., there is no tomorrow - just today

To procrastinate obedience is to disobey God.

It is not enough to say you will do something, you have to decide to do it. Don't procrastinate. Doing it is to do it. Not just saying it will be done.

We always assume that there’s tomorrow to make things right. Maybe that’s why the Bible says to not procrastinate your day of repentance.

Procrastination, Tom.’ ‘Yes–I know. It’s the thief of time.’ Leo had given him a smug look. ‘I wasn’t going to say that–I was going to say makes easy things hard, hard things harder.

If you do the same things you’ve always done, you’ll get the same results you’ve always gotten. That’s what the sages say, and the same can be said for thinking. Change your thoughts, change your life.

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")

1. Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort? Pursuing the life projects that matter to you the most will almost always entail not feeling fully in control of your time, immune to the painful assaults of reality, or confident about the future. It means embarking on ventures that might fail, perhaps because you’ll find you lacked sufficient talent; it means risking embarrassment, holding difficult conversations, disappointing others, and getting so deep into relationships that additional suffering—when bad things happen to those you care about—is all but guaranteed. And so we naturally tend to make decisions about our daily use of time that prioritize anxiety-avoidance instead. Procrastination, distraction, commitment-phobia, clearing the decks, and taking on too many projects at once are all ways of trying to maintain the illusion that you’re in charge of things. In a subtler way, so too is compulsive worrying, which offers its own gloomy but comforting sense that you’re doing something constructive to try to stay in control. James Hollis recommends asking of every significant decision in life: “Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?” The question circumvents the urge to make decisions in the service of alleviating anxiety and instead helps you make contact with your deeper intentions for your time. If you’re trying to decide whether to leave a given job or relationship, say, or to redouble your commitment to it, asking what would make you happiest is likely to lure you toward the most comfortable option, or else leave you paralyzed by indecision. But you usually know, intuitively, whether remaining in a relationship or job would present the kind of challenges that will help you grow as a person (enlargement) or the kind that will cause your soul to shrivel with every passing week (diminishment). Choose uncomfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment whenever you can.

... Make your work IMPORTANT. Important enough to ignore other things. mportant enough to decide to finish it. Important enough to say 'No' to anything else - until it's done." - from "How to Focus : Stop Procrastination, Improve Your Concentration, & Get More Done!

George Orwell, author of the classics Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, had this to say: “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one was not driven by some demon that one can neither resist nor understand.

Procrastination is when you walk by the loose screw in the door hinge 87 times and each time think about it, say to yourself that you’re going to fix it, kick yourself that you don’t do it, even tell your wife that you’ll do it, still don’t do it, then finally, one day, seemingly spur of the moment, you fix it on the 88th time.

If your boundaries have been injured, you may find that when you are in conflict with someone, you shut down without even being aware of it. This isolates us from love, and keeps us from taking in safe people. Kate had been quite controlled by her overprotective mother. She’d always been warned that she was sickly, would get hit by cars, and didn’t know how to care for herself well. So she fulfilled all those prophecies. Having no sense of strong boundaries, Kate had great difficulty taking risks and connecting with people. The only safe people were at her home. Finally, however, with a supportive church group, Kate set limits on her time with her mom, made friends in her singles’ group, and stayed connected to her new spiritual family. People who have trouble with boundaries may exhibit the following symptoms: blaming others, codependency, depression, difficulties with being alone, disorganization and lack of direction, extreme dependency, feelings of being let down, feelings of obligation, generalized anxiety, identity confusion, impulsiveness, inability to say no, isolation, masochism, overresponsibility and guilt, panic, passive-aggressive behavior, procrastination and inability to follow through, resentment, substance abuse and eating disorders, thought problems and obsessive-compulsive problems, underresponsibility, and victim mentality.

The same goes for us. When a bad habit reveals itself, counteract it with a commitment to a contrary virtue. For instance, let’s say you find yourself procrastinating today—don’t dig in and fight it. Get up and take a walk to clear your head and reset instead. If you find yourself saying something negative or nasty, don’t kick yourself. Add something positive and nice to qualify the remark.

I dare say you have often observed this disposition to temporize, or to procrastinate, in people who are labouring under any very poignant sorrow. Their powers of mind seem to be rendered torpid, so that they have a horror of any thing like action, and like nothing in the world so well as to liequietly in bed and “nurse their grief,” as the old ladies express it- that is to say, ruminate over the trouble.

If one is not altogether sincere in assuring oneself that one does not wish ever to see again her whom one loves, one would not be a whit more sincere in saying that one would like to see her. For no doubt one can endure her absence only when one promises oneself that it shall not be for long, and thinks of the day on which one shall see her again, but at the same time one feels how much less painful are those daily recurring dreams of a meeting immediate and incessantly postponed than would be an interview which might be followed by a spasm of jealousy, with the result that the news that one is shortly to see her whom one loves would cause a disturbance which would be none too pleasant. What one procrastinates now from day to day is no longer the end of the intolerable anxiety caused by separation, it is the dreaded renewal of emotions which can lead to nothing.

To awaken each morning is to be born again. To fall asleep each night is to die to the day. Why do we delay doing the good we would like to do? Why do we put off speaking words of kindness, giving encouragement, writing a letter, taking care of ourselves? Why do we delay making decisions, in living our lives? Procrastination is a dreadful and terrible malady. We may say ‘do it now’ but then we wait for the ‘right time.’ There is no need to wait to live your life.” –W. Edward Harris

My dear Péguy, it would, however, be wrong to wait, to postpone continually. He who takes the road of later ends then on the road of never. I know some people who seem to turn life into a perpetual waiting room. The trains come and go, and they say: 'I'll leave another time! I'll make a confession on my deathbed!' Visconti-Venosta said of the 'hero Anselmo': A day goes by, and then another, But the hero Anselmo never returns. Here we have the opposite: an Anselmo who never sets out.

In her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, psychologist Angela Duckworth shares this story: Three bricklayers are asked: “What are you doing?” The first says, “I am laying bricks.” The second says, “I am building a church.” And the third says, “I am building the house of God.” The first bricklayer has a job. The second has a career. The third has a calling. The difference between a job, a career, and a calling lies in how you perceive the work. You can be doing the same tasks as the person next to you and yet have a vastly different experience.

The intelligent want self-control; children want candy. —RUMI INTRODUCTION Welcome to Willpower 101 Whenever I mention that I teach a course on willpower, the nearly universal response is, “Oh, that’s what I need.” Now more than ever, people realize that willpower—the ability to control their attention, emotions, and desires—influences their physical health, financial security, relationships, and professional success. We all know this. We know we’re supposed to be in control of every aspect of our lives, from what we eat to what we do, say, and buy. And yet, most people feel like willpower failures—in control one moment but overwhelmed and out of control the next. According to the American Psychological Association, Americans name lack of willpower as the number-one reason they struggle to meet their goals. Many feel guilty about letting themselves and others down. Others feel at the mercy of their thoughts, emotions, and cravings, their lives dictated by impulses rather than conscious choices. Even the best-controlled feel a kind of exhaustion at keeping it all together and wonder if life is supposed to be such a struggle. As a health psychologist and educator for the Stanford School of Medicine’s Health Improvement Program, my job is to help people manage stress and make healthy choices. After years of watching people struggle to change their thoughts, emotions, bodies, and habits, I realized that much of what people believed about willpower was sabotaging their success and creating unnecessary stress. Although scientific research had much to say that could help them, it was clear that these insights had not yet become part of public understanding. Instead, people continued to rely on worn-out strategies for self-control. I saw again and again that the strategies most people use weren’t just ineffective—they actually backfired, leading to self-sabotage and losing control. This led me to create “The Science of Willpower,” a class offered to the public through Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program. The course brings together the newest insights about self-control from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine to explain how we can break old habits and create healthy habits, conquer procrastination, find our focus, and manage stress. It illuminates why we give in to temptation and how we can find the strength to resist. It demonstrates the importance of understanding the limits of self-control,

[...]however much one may love the poison that is destroying one, when one has compulsorily to do without it, and has had to do without it for some time past, one cannot help attaching a certain value to the peace of mind which one had ceased to know, to the absence of emotion and suffering. If one is not altogether sincere in assuring oneself that one does not wish ever to see again her whom one loves, one would not be a whit more sincere in saying that one would like to see her. For no doubt one can endure her absence only when one promises oneself that it shall not be for long, and thinks of the day on which one shall see her again, but at the same time one feels how much less painful are those daily recurring dreams of a meeting immediate and incessantly postponed than would be an interview which might be followed by a spasm of jealousy, with the result that the news that one is shortly to see her whom one loves would cause a disturbance which would be none too pleasant. What one procrastinates now from day to day is no longer the end of the intolerable anxiety caused by separation, it is the dreaded renewal of emotions which can lead to nothing. How infinitely one prefers to any such interview the docile memory which one can supplement at one’s pleasure with dreams, in which she who in reality does not love one seems, far from that, to be making protestations of her love for one, when one is by oneself; that memory which one can contrive, by blending gradually with it a portion of what one desires, to render as pleasing as one may choose, how infinitely one prefers it to the avoided interview in which one would have to deal with a creature to whom one could no longer dictate at one’s pleasure the words that one would like to hear on her lips, but from whom one would meet with fresh coldness, unlooked-for violence. We know, all of us, when we no longer love, that forgetfulness, that even a vague memory do not cause us so much suffering as an ill-starred love.

Whatever rules you have adopted, abide by them as laws, and as if you would be impious to transgress them; and do not regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours. How long, then, will you delay to demand of yourself the noblest improvements, and in no instance to transgress the judgments of reason? You have received the philosophic principles with which you ought to be conversant; and you have been conversant with them. For what other master, then, do you wait as an excuse for this delay in self-reformation? You are no longer a boy but a grown man. If, therefore, you will be negligent and slothful, and always add procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose, and fix day after day in which you will attend to yourself, you will insensibly continue to accomplish nothing and, living and dying, remain of vulgar mind. This instant, then, think yourself worthy of living as a man grown up and a proficient. Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law. And if any instance of pain or pleasure, glory or disgrace, be set before you, remember that now is the combat, now the Olympiad comes on, nor can it be put off; and that by one failure and defeat honor may be lost or—won. Thus Socrates became perfect, improving himself by everything, following reason alone. And though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought, however, to live as one seeking to be a Socrates.

will only intensify the procrastination and laziness. The place to put the mental energy is into releasing the old and creating a new thought pattern. Say: “I am willing to release the need to be unworthy. I am worthy of the very best in life, and I now lovingly allow myself to accept it. “As I spend a few days doing this affirmation over and over, my outer effect pattern of procrastination will automatically begin to fade. “As I internally create a pattern of self-worth, then I no longer have the need to delay my good.” Do you see how this could apply to some of the negative patterns or outer effects in your life? Let’s stop wasting time and energy putting ourselves down for something we can’t help doing if we have certain inner beliefs. Change the beliefs.

We think we make bucket lists to ward off regret, but really they help us to ward off death. After all, the longer our bucket lists are, the more time we imagine we have left to accomplish everything on them. Cutting the list down, however, makes a tiny dent in our denial systems, forcing us to acknowledge a sobering truth: Life has a 100 percent mortality rate. Every single one of us will die, and most of us have no idea how or when that will happen. In fact, as each second passes, we’re all in the process of coming closer to our eventual deaths. As the saying goes, none of us will get out of here alive. [...] Who wants to think about this? How much easier it is to become death procrastinators! Many of us take for granted the people we love and the things we find meaningful, only to realize, when our deadline is announced, that we’d been skating by on the project: our lives.

Hang on, Levon,” said Elf. “Hang on. Are you saying you want to sack Griff because his brother just died in a horrific car crash and he’s too full of grief to play? Seriously?” “I am laying out the facts. Because somebody has to. Or there is no band. Of course we give Griff time. Of course. But you heard Griff. You saw him. It is entirely possible he won’t be back.” “Drummers like Griff don’t grow on trees,” said Elf. “You think I don’t know that?” asked Levon. “I chose him! But a drummer who can’t drum isn’t a drummer. Jasper. Speak.” Jasper drew a spiral on the steamy glass. “Eight days.” “Speak English, not Cryptic Crossword. Please. I have a headache as big as East Anglia.” “My Dutch grandfather used to say, ‘If you don’t know what to do, do nothing for eight days.’ ” Dean asked, “Why eight?” “Less than eight is haste. More than eight is procrastination. Eight days is long enough for the world to shuffle the deck and deal you another hand.” Without warning, the train shuddered into motion. The passengers raised a weary ironic cheer.

GET MOVING People are often scared of the word exercise. We associate the word with pain, and we think of it as a chore. (And it can be--who likes going to the gym at 6 A.M.?) If that’s how you’re thinking, then you need to change your psychology. I don’t think of my body in terms of exercise; I think in terms of movement. Look at the actual word--I see it as “meant to move.” As human beings, going back to the beginning of civilization, we’ve had to move to survive. We had to throw spears to hunt, we had to prepare land to plant seeds, we had to gather firewood. Our bodies are hardwired to move. Not even TiVo can rewire those thousands of years of DNA. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s easy to forget: your body is connected to your mind and spirit. People say, “I’m miserable because I’m overweight” or “I’m overweight because I’m miserable,” but these two go hand in hand. I know when I drink to excess or put poisons in my body, the next day I’m not going to feel happy or inspired. The body is the vehicle that can help you reach your dreams. Keeping it moving, strong, and healthy paves the way to overall well-being. You can’t say you love yourself when you abuse yourself physically, and by not using your body, you’re abusing it. But here’s the first piece of good news: you don’t have to be in the gym to exercise. You just need to move--and keep moving. It can be anywhere, at any time. Sometimes I’ll do push-ups during a commercial break while watching TV. Sometimes I take a short walk, even around the block with my dog, just to break up my day. Your body wants to move; your body was created to move. You have to feed that. When you’re feeling miserable, your body is telling you to get on your feet. Moving makes you feel good. It helps you slay the demon of procrastination that lurks in the shadow of every human being. Most of us sleepwalk through life because we’re waiting for the perfect time, the perfect place, and the perfect opportunity to improve ourselves. Stop waiting. Start moving and keep moving.

We think we make bucket lists to ward off regret, but really they help us to ward off death. After all, the longer our bucket lists are, the more time we imagine we have left to accomplish everything on them. Cutting the list down, however, makes a tiny dent in our denial systems, forcing us to acknowledge a sobering truth: Life has a 100 percent mortality rate. Every single one of us will die, and most of us have no idea how or when that will happen. In fact, as each second passes, we’re all in the process of coming closer to our eventual deaths. As the saying goes, none of us will get out of here alive. [...] Who wants to think about this? How much easier it is to become death procrastinators! Many of us take for granted the people we love and the things we find meaningful, only to realize, when our deadline is announced, that we’d been skating by on the project: our lives.”-Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, p.79, Lori Gottlieb “It’s no surprise that we often dream about our fears. We have a lot of fears. What are we afraid of? We are afraid of being hurt. We are afraid of being humiliated. We are afraid of failure and we are afraid of success. We are afraid of being alone and we are afraid of connection. We are afraid to listen to what our hearts are telling us. We are afraid of being unhappy and we are afraid of being too happy. We are afraid of not having our parents’ approval and we are afraid of accepting ourselves for who we really are. We are afraid of bad health and good fortune. We are afraid of our envy and having too much. We are afraid to have hope for things that we might not get. We are afraid of change and we are afraid of not changing. We are afraid of something happening to our kids, our jobs. We are afraid of not having control and afraid of our own power. We are afraid of how briefly we are alive and how long we will be dead. (We are afraid that after we die, we won’t have mattered.) We are afraid of being responsible for our own lives. Sometimes it takes a while to admit our fears, especially to ourselves.

Right,” he said, “As you well know, humans are biologically programmed to sleep twice a day—a siesta in the afternoon, then eight hours of sleep at night.” She nodded. “Except most of us skip the siesta because our jobs demand it. And when I say most of us, I really just mean Americans. Mexico doesn’t have this problem, nor does France or Italy or any of those other countries that drink even more than we do at lunch. Still, the fact remains: human productivity naturally drops in the afternoon. In TV, this is referred to as the Afternoon Depression Zone. Too late to get anything meaningful done; too early to go home. Doesn’t matter if you’re a homemaker, a fourth grader, a bricklayer, a businessman—no one is immune. Between the hours of one thirty-one and four forty-four p.m., productive life as we know it ceases to exist. It’s a virtual death zone.” Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “And although I said it affects everyone,” he continued, “it’s an especially dangerous time for the homemaker. Because unlike a fourth grader who can put off her homework, or a businessman who can pretend to be listening, the homemaker must force herself to keep going. She has to get the kids down for a nap because if she doesn’t, the evening will be hell. She has to mop the floor because if she doesn’t, someone could slip on the spilled milk. She has to run to the store because if she doesn’t, there will be nothing to eat. By the way,” he said, pausing, “have you ever noticed how women always say they need to run to the store? Not walk, not go, not stop by. Run. That’s what I mean. The homemaker is operating at an insane level of hyperproductivity. And even though she’s in way over her head, she still has to make dinner. It’s not sustainable, Elizabeth. She’s going to have a heart attack or a stroke, or at the very least be in a foul mood. And it’s all because she can’t procrastinate like her fourth grader or pretend to be doing something like her husband. She’s forced to be productive despite the fact that she’s in a potentially fatal time zone—the Afternoon Depression Zone.” “It’s classic neurogenic deprivation,” Elizabeth said, nodding.

Abundant time can make us procrastinate. Deadline pressure makes us more efficient,” Mr. Shafir says. “What scarcity does is make you focus. When there’s no scarcity, you relax, you take it easy, and then you wonder, what happened to the day? You’re treating time the way the rich treat money.

They say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Oh, it is not just paved but more engraved with our pinky promises and solemn vows. We give our word to be more frugal with our credit cards, to commit to those yoga classes in the morning or to finally reach the appointment for sight testing scheduled one month ago. Well, I think some black magic is going around or dementors have been knocking on our doors lately because all these promises become vanished over night. Giving up our long-term projects and ideas for that sweet flavor of immediate gratification, my friends, this is not called Alohomora but procrastination. Seriously now, why do we lose the battle against procrastination leaving the lava flow of emotions taking over our plans so frequently?

Where procrastination and excuses reign, success is highly missed than delayed. Opportunity they say comes but once. You must therefore be prepared to tap every good opportunity that appears on your way

Stephen Covey says, “Before you begin scrambling up the ladder of success, make sure that it is leaning against the right building.” Step

When you say you fear death you are really saying that you fear you have not lived your true life.

What Can You Do About a Passive Child? Parents of passive children have a double problem. These kids have the same boundary problems of irresponsibility or resistance to ownership, but it’s harder to engage them in the learning process. Here are some ways children exhibit passivity: • Procrastination. The child responds to you at the last possible moment. He finishes school tasks late and “makes” you wait in the car for him to get ready for school or other meetings. When you ask him to turn the music down or set the dinner table, a normally energetic and quick-moving child slows his pace down immeasurably. He takes enormous time to do what he doesn’t want, and little time to do what he wants. • Ignoring. Your child shuts your instruction out, either pretending not to hear you or simply disregarding you. She keeps attending to her toy, her book, or her daydreaming. • Lack of initiative and risk-taking. Your child avoids new experiences, such as meeting new friends or trying out a sport or artistic medium, and he stays in familiar activities and patterns. • Living in a fantasy world. Your child tends to be more inward-oriented than invested in the real world. He seems happier and more alive when he is lost in his head, and he retreats there at the first sign of problems or discomfort. • Passive defiance. The child resists your requests by looking blankly or sullenly at you, then simply doing nothing. She is obviously angry or contemptuous of your authority, but shows you without words. • Isolation. Your child avoids contact with others, preferring to stay in her room. Rather than confront, argue, or fight with you, she instead reacts against some problem you present by leaving you. Passive kids aren’t bad or evil. They simply have a particular way of approaching life that

You are right, we live surrounded by unoptimistic procrastinators and underachievers trapped in their own cycle of corruption and religious fanaticism.” I say. “But you and I will never give in, we will always fight to be our own selves.

Incomplete tasks and procrastinating often lead to frequent and unhelpful thought patterns,” says psychologist Hadassah Lipszyc. “These thoughts can impact on sleep, trigger anxiety symptoms, and further impact on a person’s mental and emotional resources.”1

One of the most significant reasons that people fail to act is that we feel overwhelmed by what we need to do. A project or a chore might seem so big and time-consuming that you can’t imagine how you’re ever going to get it done. We look at the project in its entirety and immediately feel that the task at hand is too big, so we shut down or put it off. “Incomplete tasks and procrastinating often lead to frequent and unhelpful thought patterns,” says psychologist Hadassah Lipszyc. “These thoughts can impact on sleep, trigger anxiety symptoms, and further impact on a person’s mental and emotional resources.

I put the pro in procrastinate.” — Unknown

It is critical to learn how to take the opposite view of failure. Failure can be viewed as a necessary ingredient in the recipe for future success. But aren’t these just empty phrases? Why do we need failure? First of all, whenever you fail to succeed at something, you enter the “learning zone”. In this state your brain is capable of learning new things that you would otherwise never learn. Thanks to this, your chances of managing a similar situation in the future are increased. Second of all, in spite of failure, just trying was already beneficial. It means you have left your comfort zone and have performed an act of small heroism. As my grandfather used to say, << “Even falling flat on your face is a step forward.” >>

Ignore the voice within you that says you “cannot” by going ahead and doing it anyway.

It's never too early or too late to be someone of worth or to do something about your life. As long as you're alive, it's time.

Benjamin Franklin says: “You may delay, but time will not.

#23 - Take Immediate Action Many people have difficulty taking action. Reasons vary. Some folks fear failure. Others are disinclined to try new things. Still others are saddled with indecision to the point that they become paralyzed when confronted with multiple options. But making decisions and acting on them quickly can benefit you in several ways. First, you become more committed to the path you choose for yourself. Second, you radiate confidence, an essential trait if you serve in a leadership role. Third, it improves communication; others will realize you’re disinclined to vacillate and respond in a similar manner. Fourth, you accomplish more. These advantages are tough to ignore. If you tend to dither when making decisions and forging ahead, consider developing this habit. It can literally change your life. If you’re unaccustomed to taking immediate action, here’s how I would build this habit… How to start small: Compile a list of tasks you’ve put on the back burner. During Week 1, pick one task from the list each day. Regardless of the reason you put it off (procrastination, a fear of failure, etc.), commit to finishing it before the end of the day. Beginning in Week 2, continue to work through your list of postponed tasks, addressing one per day. In addition, spend 10 minutes per day cleaning up your email inbox. This is a common area of indecision for people. Train yourself to deal with each email decisively. Respond to it, delete it, or archive it. During Week 3, focus on making at least one decision quickly per day. When confronted with multiple options, choose one within 10 seconds. For example, let’s say your spouse asks you which restaurant you’d like to visit for dinner. Instead of spending five minutes considering every local venue, just choose one. Be decisive. Starting in Week 4, look for opportunities to make quick decisions and take immediate action. For example, if you’re presented with more than one set of driving directions, pick one and move on. If you’re at the grocery store and trying to decide between chocolate chip ice cream or Rocky road, choose one and put it in your shopping cart. If you’re trying to decide between two wines for a dinner party, make a fast decision. Give yourself 10 seconds.

Ones with a Nine wing (1w9). Ones with a Nine wing tend to be more introverted, detached and relaxed. More idealistic and objective, they are often more circumspect, thinking before they speak to avoid saying something wrong or erroneous. They will pause before finishing a thought. Ones with a Nine wing are outwardly more calm and mull over decisions for a long time—this wing exacerbates rather than helps the One with procrastination. The laid-back, easygoing stance of 1w9s helps in building and maintaining relationships. Without the influence of the Nine, Ones tend to have too many expectations for others, so when they feel let down, the result is often resentment.

Saying God time is the best is a thing of joke because God works all times. Never allow procrastination and laziness implant you.

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.

In 2008, Donald Trump published a book with Meredith McIver titled Never Give Up. In it he compiled what he labeled his “Top 10 List for Success.” The items on his list are so close to Peale’s prescriptions that it worth listing them as they are deeply built into Trump’s self-psychology. Despite being written over ten years ago, one can see all these elements of Trump’s current rhetoric and conduct. Trump’s ten rules include: 1. Never give up! Do not settle for remaining in your comfort zone. Remaining complacent is a good way to get nowhere. 2. Be passionate! If you love what you’re doing, it will never seem like work. 3. Be focused! Ask yourself: What should I be thinking about right now? Shut out interference. In this age of multitasking, this is a valuable technique to acquire. 4. Keep your momentum! Listen, apply, and move forward. Do not procrastinate. 5. See yourself as victorious! That will focus you in the right direction. 6. Be tenacious! Being stubborn can work wonders. 7. Be lucky! The old saying: ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get’ is absolutely right on. 8. Believe in yourself! If you don’t, no one else will either. Think of yourself as a one-man army. 9. Ask yourself: What am I pretending not to see? There may be some great opportunities right around you, even if things aren’t looking so great. Great adversity can turn into a great victory. 10. Look at the solution, not the problem. And never give up! Never, never, never give up.

I read that office workers spend a staggering 28 percent of their office time on email, but I bet I spend more time than that. To make my email habit more convenient, I decided to cut out salutations and closings. I’d fallen into the habit of writing an email like an old-fashioned letter, instead of using the casualness and brevity now appropriate to email. An email that says: Hi Peter—Thanks so much for the link. I’m off to read the article right now. Warmly, Gretchen takes a lot more work than an email that says: Thanks! Off to read the article right now. The first version is more formal and polite, but the second version conveys the same tone and information, and is much quicker to write. It took a surprising amount of discipline to change my response habits. It can be hard to make things easier. I had to push myself to erase the “Hi” and to hit “send” without typing a closing. But before long, it became automatic. Not long after I’d instituted my new convenient email habits, however, I responded to a reader with an email that omitted a salutation and closing, and received a pointed email in return: “I find it really interesting that you don’t say ‘Hi Lisa’ or end your email in any kind of salutation, or say ‘if I have any more questions to drop you a line.’ Please excuse me if this is rude, I am truly just curious. Is this because you are super busy (understandably) or just not your style? I had this preconceived notion after reading your book that your dialogue would be so much more friendly/ happy and personal.” Sheesh. This was nicely put, but clearly the message was “You don’t sound very friendly.” I was taken aback. Should I go back to using more elaborate courtesy? Then I decided—no. I was sorry if I didn’t sound friendly to her, but I wanted to be able to answer emails from readers, and to keep up, I needed to make this work as convenient as possible. My habits had to reflect my values. I wrote her back, very nicely, and without a salutation or closing, to explain.

Can you imagine? You’re on your deathbed, and you’re saying this to your family: “I’m glad I watched so many FAIL compilations on YouTube.

The topic of motivation often comes up when dealing with the issue of follow-through on plans. Many adults with ADHD may aspire to achieve a goal (e.g., exercise) or get through an unavoidable obligation (e.g., exam, paying bills), but fall prey to an apparent lack of motivation, despite their best intentions. This situation reminds us of a quote attributed to the late fitness expert, Jack LaLanne, who at the age of 93 was quoted as saying, “I’m feeling great and I still have sex almost every day. Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday . . .” Returning to the executive dysfunction view of ADHD, motivation is defined as the ability to generate an emotion about a task that promotes follow-through in the absence of immediate reward or consequence (and often in the face of some degree of discomfort in the short-term). Said differently, motivation is the ability to make yourself “feel like” doing the task when there is no pressing reason to do so. Thus, you will have to find a way to make yourself feel like exercising before you achieve the results you desire or feel like studying for a midterm exam that is still several days away. You “know” logically that these are good ideas, but it is negative feelings (including boredom) or lack of feelings about a task that undercut your attempts to get started. In fact, one of the common thinking errors exhibited by adults with ADHD when procrastinating is the magnification of emotional discomfort associated with starting a task usually coupled with a minimization of the positive feelings associated with it. Adults with ADHD experience the double whammy of having greater difficulty generating positive emotions (i.e., motivation) needed to get engaged in tasks and greater difficulty inhibiting the allure of more immediate distractions, including those that provide an escape from discomfort. In fairness, from a developmental standpoint, adults with ADHD have often experienced more than their fair share of frustrations and setbacks with regard to many important aspects of their lives. Hence, our experience has been that various life responsibilities and duties have become associated with a degree of stress and little perceived reward, which magnifies the motivational challenges already faced by ADHD adults. We have adopted the metaphor of food poisoning to illustrate how one’s learning history due to ADHD creates barriers to the pursuit of valued personal goals. Food poisoning involves ingesting some sort of tainted food. It is an adaptive response that your brain and digestive system notice the presence of a toxin in the body and react with feelings of nausea and rapid expulsion of said toxin through diarrhea, vomiting, or both. Even after you have fully recuperated and have figured out that you had food poisoning, the next time you encounter that same food item, even before it reaches your lips, the sight and smell of the food will reactivate protective feelings of nausea due to the previous association of the stimulus (i.e., the food) with illness and discomfort. You can make all the intellectual arguments about your safety, and obtain assurances that the food is untainted, but your body will have this initial aversive reaction, regardless. It takes progressive exposure to untainted morsels of the food (sometimes mixing it in with “safe” food, in extreme cases) in order to break the food poisoning association. Similarly, in the course of your efforts to establish and maintain good habits for managing ADHD, you will encounter some tasks that elicit discomfort despite knowing the value of the task at hand. Therefore, it is essential to be able to manufacture motivation, just enough of it, in order to be able to shift out of avoidance and to take a “taste” of the task that you are delaying.

If someone says their commute to work is a mile and a half, you know that it’s not exactly 7,920 feet but rather that they’ve rounded it to the nearest half mile. However, if they were to say their walk to work is 95,040 inches, then you know that they have taken procrastination to a record level.

It is not love when you still have to question their loyalty

Brian Tracy, in his book Eat That Frog, says that your “frog” should be the most difficult item on your to-do list, the one where you’re most likely to procrastinate, because if you eat that first, it’ll give you energy and momentum for the rest of the day. But if you don’t, and you let him sit there on the plate and stare at you while you do a hundred unimportant things, it can drain your energy and you won’t even know it. So here’s your assignment: for the next thirty days, take a look at your list, circle the frog, and eat that first.

Men and women do make decisions wherever the Gospel is proclaimed; whether publicly or privately, some say yes, some say no, and some procrastinate. No one ever hears the Gospel proclaimed without making some kind of decision!

How can I change my attitude? How can I get rid of my anger? How can I overcome procrastination, and how can I be more loving and caring towards others? Instead, Krishna says you don’t need to change, overcome , or get rid of anything. You simply need to identify the agent of change operating within you and learn to disassociate yourself from it. The moment you do that you would no longer be bound by the qualities of that agent.

Stephen Covey says, “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.

What couldn’t they hear? They were going so fast they couldn’t hear the universe whispering to them. What was the universe saying? The universe was saying “yes” to whatever they might ask for.

We rebel against our own totalitarianism, as much as that of others. I cannot merely order myself to action, and neither can you. “I will stop procrastinating,” I say, but I don’t. “I will eat properly,” I say, but I don’t. “I will end my drunken misbehaviour,” I say, but I don’t. I cannot merely make myself over in the image constructed by my intellect (particularly if that intellect is possessed by an ideology). I have a nature, and so do you, and so do we all. We must discover that nature, and contend with it, before making peace with ourselves. What is it, that we most truly are? What is it that we could most truly become, knowing who we most truly are? We must get to the very bottom of things before such questions can be truly answered.

There Are Five Hallmark Symptoms of ADD Short attention span, for regular, routine, everyday tasks. People with ADD have a difficult time with boring tasks and need stimulation or excitement in order to stay engaged. Many people with ADD can pay attention just fine for things that are new, novel, interesting, highly stimulating, or frightening. Distractibility. People with ADD tend to notice more in their environment than others, which makes them easily distracted by outside stimuli, such as light, sounds, smells, certain tastes, or even the clothes they wear. Their keen sensitivity causes them to get easily off task. Disorganization. Most people with ADD tend to struggle with organization of time and space. They tend to be late and have trouble completing tasks on time. Many things get done at the last moment or even later. They also tend to struggle keeping their spaces tidy, especially their rooms, book bags, filing cabinets, drawers, closets, and paperwork. Procrastination. Tasks and duties get put off until the last moment. Things tend not to get done until there are deadlines or someone else is mad at them for not doing it. Poor internal supervision. Many people with ADD have issues with judgment and impulse control, and struggle not to say or do things without fully thinking them through. They also have a harder time learning from their mistakes.

Saying Yes

The person vulnerable to stress and procrastination is saying: “This project is me. My boss or client must love it, or I’ll feel rejected as a person. If I can’t make ten sales today I’m a failure. Whether I’m a winner or a loser in life will be determined by how well I do on this project.” With your work bearing a weight as enormous as the determination of your worth and your future happiness, stress is inevitable. You need some form of escape to relieve the anxiety and to disengage your self-esteem from how well you do at this game of tennis, this exam, or this job. In such a predicament, procrastination can serve as a delaying action and as a way of getting you past your perfectionism. If you delay starting your work, you cannot do your best and so any criticism or failure will not be a judgment of the real you or your best effort. If you delay making a decision, the decision will be made for you and you will not have to take responsibility if something goes wrong.

Despite the previously mentioned strategies, you may still find yourself having difficulties getting started on tasks. The sorts of tasks on which you continue to procrastinate are likely those for which you view even these small steps as being somewhat boring or painful, such as various chores, academic tasks (e.g., reading textbooks, writing assignments), or administrative tasks of adult life (e.g., dealing with taxes, finances). These and other tasks trigger negative thoughts and feelings for you that also interfere with follow-through, even on initial steps. A way to get started on these tasks is to define in strict, behavioral steps the smallest behaviors that are required to start the task. These initial behaviors may not involve actually completing the task, but they are necessary steps and help you to “touch” a task rather than keeping it at arm’s length. This approach is meant to help you break down tasks into their strict behavioral steps, akin to a recipe for cooking. You may say, “I do not know how to cook” or “I cannot do it.” However, once you follow the specific steps, including “get saucepan out of cupboard,” “fill with water,” etc., you are now engaged in the task rather than being cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally removed from it. It is an interesting exercise to see how other tasks that are typically avoided can be broken down into steps, such as a phone call (“pick up phone receiver, enter the nine-digit phone number, wait for answer, converse in my native language . . .”) or going to the gym (“stand up, go to room and find workout clothes, put in gym bag, . . .”).