81 Procrastination Quotes That Will Help You Steal Your Time Back

These procrastination quotes will inspire you to get your focus back and crush your goals.

You might be asking yourself, “Why is it bad to procrastinate, after all, I get it all finished!”

Maybe you even tell yourself that you “work better under pressure” and that there is a method to your madness!

The truth is that procrastination can have effects on your life that you may not have realized. 

How do you deal with procrastination?

It’s bad for your mental health, problems like stress and anxiety, have been linked to procrastination.

Stress and anxiety commonly bring out feelings of depression, and over time all of these feelings will start seeping into other parts of your life.

These procrastination quotes will remind you why it’s important to set goals and crush them in a timely manner (finishing a goal always makes me feel a little more badass). 

That feeling of conquering the world, one small goal at a time is euphoric and can lead to other opportunities that you might have missed because time was ticking.

So, take a quick break and enjoy these quotes.

Then, get your focus back and dive in and finish that task!

You never know what is waiting for you.

If you love this quote collection, read out our most popular quote article about short inspirational quotes for daily motivation.

 If you need more inspirational quotes, check out our motivational quotes category page.

Procrastination quotes about time and waiting

1. “You may delay, but time will not.” ― Benjamin Franklin

2. “My advice is, never do to-morrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!”―Charles Dickens

3. “Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”– Napoleon Bonaparte

4. “If you procrastinate when faced with a big difficult problem… break the problem into parts, and handle one part at a time.”– Robert Collier

5. “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

6. “NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.”― Sinclair Lewis

7. “If you wait for things to be perfect, you walk away with NOTHING. Just jump in and get started.”― Jennifer Ritchie Payette

8. “Get up, get up, what’s taking so long? Get up, Get up, get a move on! Stop stalling.” – Get Up, Shinedown

Humorous procrastination quotes

9. “I’m a big believer in putting things off, In fact, I even put off procrastinating. – Ella Varner

10. “Procrastinate now, don’t put it off.”― Ellen DeGeneres

11. “My mother always told me I wouldn’t amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, ‘Just wait.”― Judy Tenuta

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

13. “Someday is not a day of the week.”― Janet Dailey

14. “Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday”― Don Marquis

15. “You actually do not know your true potential unless you are liberated from the Procrasdemon.”― Neeraj Agnihotri

16. “If your new year resolution is to quit smoking, don’t forget to also quit procrastination, and if your new year resolution is to stop womanizing, don’t forget to also stop procrastinating.”― Bamigboye Olurotimi

 17. “Continuous learning is the new procrastination.”― Maciej Aniserowicz

18. “Anything is better than doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”― Maureen Johnson

You might also like these quotes about laziness and how to fight it.

Procrastination quotes about writers and writing

19. “The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.”― Alan Dean Foster

20. “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

21. “We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.”― Erica Jong

22. “The scholar’s greatest weakness: calling procrastination research.”― Stephen King

23. “If I waited till I felt like writing, I’d never write at all.” – Anne Tyler

24. “Start writing now, no matter what, the water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”- Louis L’Amour
If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of writing quotes that will inspire you to begin your own writing journey.

Procrastination quotes to help you crush your goals

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

26. “A year from now you may wish you had started today.”― Karen Lamb

27. “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”― Abraham Lincoln

28. “A day can really slip by when you’re deliberately avoiding what you’re supposed to do.”― Bill Watterson

29. “…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

30. “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”– Abraham Lincoln

31. “The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.”– Alexander Graham Bell

32. “Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin.”– Victor Kiam

33. “He who is begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.” – Horace

34. “Anything worth putting off is worth abandoning altogether.”– Epictetus

35. “If you want to get anywhere, you have to start somewhere.”― Frank Sonnenberg

36. “Do first what you don’t want to do most.” Clifford Cohen

Procrastination quotes about life and living

37. “Your Life Is Happening Right Now: Don’t let procrastination take over your life. Be brave and take risks. Your life is happening right now.”― Roy T. Bennett

38. “Success is not obtained overnight. It comes in installments; you get a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow until the whole package is given out. The day you procrastinate, you lose that day’s success.”― Israelmore Ayivor

39. “You can dance in the storm. Don’t wait for the rain to be over before because it might take too long. You can do it now. Wherever you are, right now, you can start, right now; this very moment.”― Israelmore Ayivor

40. “Procrastination is not Laziness”, I tell him. “It is fear. Call it by its right name, and forgive yourself.”― Julia Cameron

41. “Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake.”– Francis Bacon

42. “During a very busy life I have often been asked, “How did you manage to do it all?” The answer is very simple. It is because I did everything promptly.”– Richard Tangye

43. “The penalty for procrastination is the loss of hopes and dreams.”― Tai Lopez

44. “Sometimes”, said Miss Phillips, “the thing you dread doing the very thing you should do, just so you can stop thinking about it.”― Marci Shimoff

45. “Don’t procrastinate, start building yourself now!”― Sunday Adelaja

Other insightful procrastination quotes

46. “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 realize 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.”― Oliver Burkeman

47. “Perhaps the most valuable result of an education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.”– Thomas Huxley

48. “Waiting is a trap. There will always be reasons to wait – The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons, and results, and reasons simply don’t count.” – Robert Anthony

49. “Often just by taking action, by doing something about the situation can relieve the stress and help correct the situation.”– Catherine Pulsifer

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. “Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.” – Mason Cooley

52. Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.” – Wayne Gretzky

53. “Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” – M. Scott Peck

54. The problem with waiting until tomorrow is that when it finally arrives, it is called today.” – Jim Rohn

55. “God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.” – St. Augustine of Hippo

56. “A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.” – Lord Acton

57. “Procrastination is like a credit card: it’s a lot of fun until you get the bill.” – Christopher Parker

58. Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.” – Napoleon Hill

59. “The greatest amount of wasted time is the time not getting started.” – Dawson Trotman

Procrastination Quotes that Will shift You Into Action

60. Action will destroy your procrastination.” — Og Mandino

61.”Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today” — Thomas Jefferson

62. “Time wasted is existence; used is life.” — Edward Young

63. “Getting an idea should be like sitting on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something.” — E. L. Simpson

64. “The man who waits to know everything is the man who never does anything” — Craig D. Lounsbrough

65. “How to stop procrastinating starts with believing you can overcome procrastination.” —  Robert Moment

66. “Never put things off…you will wake up and find them gone.” —  James Jones

67. “Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are only so many tomorrows.” ― Michael Landon

68. “What is deferred is not avoided.” ― Thomas More

69. “You may not be punished for your procrastination, but for sure you will be punished by your procrastination.” ― Debasish Mridha

70. “Whatever you want to achieve, you have to keep on working on it continuously, setting and achieving targets. There should be no procrastination for whatever reason.” ― Chitesh Bhat

Short Procrastination Quotes That Relate With Our daily Life

71. “If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.” ― Rita Mae Brown

72. “Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.” ― Steven Wright

73. “If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.” ― Richard Miller

74. “The trouble is that you think you have time.” ― Jack Kornfield

75. When all is said and done, more is said than done.” ― Lou Holtz

76. “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” ― William James

77. “Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” ― Napoleon Hill

78. “The time to begin most things is ten years ago.” ― Mignon McLaughlin

79. “Every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.” ― Charles Kingsley

80. “There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back.” ― Tom DeMarco

81. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ― Rumi

What did you learn from these procrastination quotes?

As a writer and a graduate student, I saw myself in a lot of these procrastination quotes.

I told my friend I was working on an article about procrastination, and that it and its “five friends” (other articles) were all due tomorrow…Nothing to see here folks, keep on reading!

How do you deal with procrastination?

I set timers: an hour to clean, an hour to write, and an hour for homework, etc.

They help me stay on task!

Which of these helpful procrastination quotes resonated the most with you?

Drop a comment here before you go accomplish that project that you were trying to avoid.

I believe in you!