“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today”. Sounds really wise. It sounds true, and reasonable. But so does “never do today what you can put off until tomorrow”.

Both statements are true and wise, depending on the circumstances. The question is: are we putting it off until later because we’re being lazy, or are we simply prioritizing?

Maybe doing it today will cause us to rush it and do a bad job. Maybe we’re caught up in the moment and don’t realize that it doesn’t need to be done right now. Or maybe it doesn’t need to be done at all and we’re merely telling ourselves that it does.

Putting it off until later is a really bad idea when it actually needs to be done now. But just as we’re good at being lazy, we’re also good at being urgent. In other words, we’re not good at being patient. We pretty much always want things done right now. Sometimes being a little “lazy” can keep us out of trouble.

Here’s another one: “the early bird catches the worm”. Well, it depends on what we’re talking about. Because it’s also true that “the second mouse gets the cheese”. You don’t want to be the early bird in all situations.