APAD: Procrastination is the thief of time
Meaning:
Putting off an action leads to time wasting. If something is necessary, it is
best to act quickly to accomplish it.
Background:
The English writer Edward Young, who coined this saying, published
Night-Thoughts, in 1742. Although Young isn't as widely read as
contemporaries like Pope and Samuel Johnson, he was revered by them and
Johnson called him `was a man of genius and a poet'. The Night-Thoughts poem
itself is a major work and has been described as the 18th century's greatest
long poem. Long is unarguable; it consists of nearly 10,000 lines of blank
verse. It is in nine sections - the `Nights' of the title and was published
in serial form between 1742 and 1746.
The poem involves a nocturnal speaker grieving over the deaths of a child,
wife and a friend and finding consolation in Christian thoughts. The
`procrastination is the thief of time' line appears towards the beginning of
the work:
Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time;
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
And to the mercies of a moment leaves
The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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Times have changed. Taleb argues that procrastination may be a good thing.
Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things
take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from
some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad -- at an
existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment.
Garrison Keillor used to start a monologue with something like:
It stormed last night and this morning there's a foot of snow. Lake Wobegon
people welcome natural disasters. Things long put off, things you always
said you were going to but haven't got around to do, now snow is here and
you don't have to do them.
Bill, my old friend, used to procrastinate a lot when he worked as a computer
programmer. One could go crazy multitasking and burning the night oil to meet
deadlines and please higher-ups, he said, and a douche boss and competition
among fellow tech-slaves would make it worse. His way of staying sane was to
take deep breaths through the day, sleep well at night, set a limit on what he
had to know, and let things take care of themselves. He might have overdone it,
however, and got the sack a couple of times as a result. So far, he hasn't repented.
