I04 · Resistance and Procrastination
Procrastination and delaying action
Putting off important tasks, waiting for the right mood or escaping into trivial busywork.
Cues
Showing 14 of 14 cues
“Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.”
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
“You must set your hands to tasks which you can finish or at least hope to finish, and avoid those which get bigger as you proceed and do not cease where you had intended.”
“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?”
“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”
“That’s why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should.”
QuoteProcrastination and delaying actionDeliberate effort and plateaus2 more related links
Lenses
Modules
“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing.”
“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.”
“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be One.”
“If you didn’t learn these things in order to demonstrate them in practice, what did you learn them for?”
“And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of gravity - through him all things are ruined. Not by wrath, but by laughter do we slay. Come, let us slay the spirit of gravity! I learned to walk; since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move. Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.”
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all 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.”
Traction versus distraction
The opposite of distraction is not focus, but traction: traction is any action done with intent that moves you toward what you planned, while distraction pulls you away from your planned intent, often prioritizing the urgent over the important.