Life & Wisdom Quote by Roger von Oech

Von Oech frames procrastination as a quiet act of self-erasure. The line isn’t trying to motivate you with lofty ideals; it’s cornering you with a binary. You either consent to drift, or you stand up. That blunt either/or is the point: it denies you the comforting middle category most of us live in, where we’re “thinking about it,” “getting ready,” “waiting for the right time.” In his construction, those are just better-sounding ways to describe letting your life “slip away.”

The verb choice does a lot of sneaky work. “Slip away” suggests something passive, almost accidental, like time leaking through your fingers. It lets the reader recognize themselves without instantly triggering defensiveness. Then the sentence pivots to “get up and do them,” a physical command that turns ambition into bodily movement. This is less self-help affirmation than behaviorist shove: motivation is treated as an output of action, not its prerequisite.

As a creativity writer and consultant associated with de-bottlenecking thinking, von Oech is speaking into a culture that fetishizes planning and internal readiness. The subtext is anti-perfectionist: you don’t wait until you’re the person who does the thing; you become that person by doing it badly, then better. The quote works because it moralizes agency without preaching. It quietly implies a harsh truth modern life loves to obscure: not choosing is still a choice, and it has a cost you can’t refund later.