Dear Friend,

Last night, I sat down to do some work, but then an interesting-looking article caught my eye. I thought I’d take two minutes to read it. But, as often happens on the Internet, one article led to another and then another and another. An hour and a half later, I emerged having read dozens of pages about the North Korean refugee crisis in China, last year’s Mount Everest avalanche, and the devastating 1993 famine in South Sudan.

I'd learned a lot but I was no closer to finishing my work.

And I know I’m not alone. A significant percentage of people are chronic procrastinators, and the vast majority of us do so periodically. (Certainly, educating oneself is not a waste of time, but it would have been more effective to wait until my work was done.)

These weeks, as we count the days between Passover and Shavuot, we focus on self-refinement. During this time, we read a chapter of Ethics of the Fathers each Shabbat. Every chapter is chock full of “advice for life.”

This week we read chapter two, which includes advice against procrastination: “Don’t say ‘When I’ll be free, I will study,’ lest you’ll never be free” (2:4).

There is so much we can accomplish. Why not start right now?

Miriam Szokovski
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team