What Is "The Thief Of Time"� According To The Saying?

"Procrastination is the thief of time" is a line from the long poem "The Complaint: Night Thoughts" by 18th-century poet Edward Young. Over the years it has become a proverb, though now less commonly used than simpler sayings such as "time is money."

Procrastination is, literally, putting off until tomorrow. So the idea of this quotation is that if you put off a task until later you have lost all the time until you eventually get round to doing it, not just the time it actually takes to complete the task. You can see this is true if you think of some job you are dreading, but keep putting off. Every time you think of it, your heart probably sinks, and the longer you leave it the worse it feels. Therefore, you haven't just got to spend X number of hours on this job, you've poisoned the intervening time by dreading it.