Peter McWilliams Quotes

Most people put off till tomorrow that which they should have done yesterday.

If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today.

The best time to do something significant is between yesterday and tomorrow.

Procrastination is something you do yourself. You know: "I gotta sharpen these pencils before I start. I got 20 pencils, they're looking kinda dull." Well, the pencils aren't calling you and alluring you and inviting you and offering you anything. They're just sitting there. You're the one who's procrastinating.

The greatest thief this world has ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large.

Procrastination is the thief of time: Year after year it steals, till all are fled.

Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken.

Procrastination is the kidnapper of souls and the recruiting-officer of hell.

The future started yesterday, and we're already late.

I need eight hours to get maybe 20 minutes of work done. I had one of those yesterday: seven hours of self-loathing.

Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

Do not put your work off till to-morrow and the day after; for a sluggish worker does not fill his barn, nor one who puts off his work: industry makes work go well, but a man who puts off work is always at hand-grips with ruin.

If time is money/ I'm an hour past paid

It's the task that's never started that's more tiresome.

That's the rational premise behind my spending hours of billable time adjusting my Facebook preferences. The real reason, of course, for all this stuff, is that it provides a way to blow off work you should be doing, while creating the illusion that you are achieving something.

Nothing so perilous as procrastination

There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary.

Set me anything to do as a task, and it is inconceivable the desire I have to do something else.

There were times in my life when I had one thing to do all day, but I still couldn’t get to it. “I gotta go to the post office, but I’d probably have to put on pants. And they’re only open till five. Looks like I’m going to have to do that next week.

You realize that we over-exaggerate yesterday, we over-estimate tomorrow and we underestimate today. We think, "Well, I'm going to kill time," "I'll get back to this tomorrow."

One of the best ways of avoiding necessary and even urgent tasks is to seem to be busily employed on things that are already done.

My favorite method of procrastination is to do something else that needs doing, but not quite so imminently. Sleeping is also good, as is drinking until you really can't do anything very well anymore.

In putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it.

If there is something that you have to do, resist the temptation to do it under duress. Ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that would happen if I didn't do this?" And if you can get away with not doing it at all, don't do it. And then imagine what would it feel like to have this done. Spend a day or two, if you can, just 15 minutes here, 5 minutes here, 2 minutes here, here and here, imagining it completed in a way that pleases you! And then, the next time you decide that you're going to take action about it, the action is going to be a whole lot easier.

Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing.