Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.
My Quote Collection
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
"Begin with what demands your immediate attention and do not think of the rest." -- Anon. Web Wisdom
"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the
same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least
twice as fast as that!" -- Tweedledum, in "Through the Looking-Glass"
• Courage is -- "it's a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. It's like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging." -- Mary Daly, "Pure Lust"
"Our values aren't our thoughts about what our values should be. Our values are our actions." --
"Real artists ship." -- Steve Jobs
"Done is better than perfect." -- Anne Mollegen Smith.
"Never squander what to others are riches" -- Buddhist Proverb
We do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children. -- Anon?
"Don't binge on that -- it's not your baileywick" -- my friend Ben
"Get in, make your Z, and get out." --- Zorro, from the short-run sitcom, Zorro and Son. http://www.geocities.com/thezorrolegend/zorroandson/zorro-and-son.html Zorro’s son is going in to the crime-fighting biz, and is practicing his Zs on a stack of hay bales covered with a sheet, in the cave. He’s painfully slow, and his dad (Zorro, played by Henry Darrow) gives him a brief lecture on how little time he’ll have to make his Z in a fight with criminals. He makes a quick and perfect Z in the sheet, hands junior the sword, and utters the words that are my mantra.
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Quote Endquote
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these, "It might have been!"
John Greenleaf Whittier
"Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have."
Louis E. Boone
"A good plan executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week."
General George S. Patton
Song
On this date there is at this link a streaming version of a song that those of us here with out-there musical tastes might enjoy as a cathartic. Think of it as a wry nod to that painful state we all know and hate. Waited Too Long, by the Thinking Feller's Union Gnothi Seauton ~ Know Thyself
song's not there anymore...I waited too long
I waited too long to say hi, pro.... too....so, Hi, a month later. I guess I was just looking in the annals and thinking this old post of mine maybe needed a link from this quotes page...since it is a quote really. Intro paragraphs, 'How to Learn' from Cocoa Programming by Aaron HillegassI just love the scenario of someone with a PhD in astrophysics luxuriating in the knowledge that they're really not stupid. How could they be, with a PhD in astrophysics?
gonna listen
...but not tonight. I don't mean to procrastinate on listening to a cool song, but I'm just so tired and I don't feel well. But I recognize the irony. :)
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Procrastination is the grave in which opportunity is buried.
Desperately afraid of this
I'm a newby, so I'm exploring some of the "archives" here, and I must comment on the first quote: "twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do."
I've been so conscious of this for the past while for some reason - I'm not sure why. I've lived a very safe, risk-free, unadventurous life (some might call it boring, pathetic, a waste). I can always think of a million reasons NOT to try something different. But I am already looking back with regret on some areas of my life where I took the easy way, often because I didn't have enough confidence in myself, because I didn't want to risk failing.
One adventurous thing I tried was a week-long sea kayaking trip in the Queen Charlotte Islands (off the north coast of British Columbia, Canada). I won a discount on it at an outdoor adventure show, and when I received the phone call offering me the trip, my mind immediately filled up with all the reasons I couldn't or didn't want to go. The kayaking company was kind enough to put me in touch with several other women who'd gone on these kinds of trips so I could discuss my concerns with them. And eventually I decided to go for it. No regrets!! Considering I had only done short day trips in a kayak before, and had never really camped in the wilderness, it was a great feeling to discover that my husband and I were strong paddlers and capable campers, moreso than most of the other participants. Just think about what I would have missed if I'd let my fears and concerns get the better of me.
I think that was a sort of turning point, and I've consciously tried to do more adventurous things since then. But most of the time I feel like I'm waiting for things to happen to me, instead of me getting out there and making them happen. I think of reasons not to, instead of reasons to. So I'm very concerned about all the regrets I may have one day, that I didn't do more when I had the time and my health.
fear
I can relate to your fearfulness. For me, though, it's a recent thing. After I lost my career a few years ago, I became very fearful about taking any professional risks. I was never afraid of failure before. I put myself right out there before without any fear at all, and I think that's why the job and career I got were so good. But the experience of losing it all was devastating, and I became intensely afraid of failure after that big failure.
It has held me back very seriously. I'm sure one of the reasons I'm still jobless four years later is my fear of putting myself out there and exposing myself to the possibility of failure and those awful feelings. But now I'm exposing myself to the feelings you get when you are utterly broke, and actually... they are worse.
I'm terrified about my current financial situation, which came into somewhat clearer focus last night (and also something bad happened). I need to get work now to matter what it is - forget prestige, high salary, professionalism, etc. I need a job, any job. I'll be calling temp agencies on Monday.
your quote collection
This one cracks me up:
"Real artists ship." -- Steve Jobs
This one is terrifyingly true:
"We do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children."
Don't get me started...
One more Quote and thoughts-- more complicated
That we would do
We should do when we would, for this "would" changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents,
And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh
That hurts by easing.
--Shakespeare, Hamlet
I include this dense quote and some thoughts a friend and I had about it because it shows that our constant condition as procrastinators is not new! This deep abiding yearning to do the right thing and to fight your urge to give up entirely --- well, it's classic.
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On Jan 19, 2006, at 8:56 AM, B wrote:
That's good. "hurts by easing" also implies to me that you're easing the pain of having missed doing it, but it's only easing. It's still there.
Take "not buying apple stock when I SHOULD have" as an example...
On Jan 19, 2006, at 9:00 AM, G wrote:
I may have figured it out some more.
I think the last two lines mean that by saying, "I really ought to have," or "I really ought to," you ease the pain of having missed doing a thing. I have never been able to get my head around the word "spendthrift" because it means someone who is not thrifty at all. So, maybe it means--the sighs of "I should have," or "I should" are cheap and are dispensed of too easily.
On Jan 19, 2006, at 9:10 AM, B wrote:
Exactly. Saying, "Oh well. I guess I should have bought some Apple stock," is a palliative that puts it past you, lets you ease on through it. But it HURTS you because it is STILL not action, and you remain stuck in the disappointment.
Oh man. This stuff is hard. Living, I mean.
My favorite quote
To be always talking is against nature...
he who boasts of what he will do succeeds in nothing...
That is why he that possesses Tao does not linger.
That quote has been around for a long while.
Regards Rexroth
Tao Te Ching
That sounds like it's from the Tao Te Ching. Do you know which chapter? I have several translations of it, and I'd like to look it up. The original Chinese was written in a very ambiguous way, and different translators can have very different takes. I'm into Taoism and Buddhism lately.
hunting for quote
Ah - found the reference. These are some lines from the A. Waley translation of the Tao Te Ching, but they are not actually sequential in the Tao Te Ching. The first line in your quote is the first line of Chapter 23. The second line of your quote is from the middle of Chapter 24. The third line of your quote is the last line of Chapter 24.
And, to my delight, in looking this up I found the original Chinese characters of the Tao Te Ching, with the A. Waley translation. I spent a long time hunting for this in book form, but it's no longer in print. (I'm learning Chinese.)
bedtime?
I can see I'm not going to bed any time soon. I want to find a way to download this site.
a fav
"In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. -- Theodore Roosevelt "
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe - Albert Einstein
Theordore Roosevelt
I didn't know it was Theodore Roosevelt who said "do the next right thing". Cool! That's one of my favorite sayings.