Yoda on the secret to success

Do or do not. There is  no try                     Yoda

This is a key principle in Behavioural Activation and in Step-by-Step Planning.

Pascal's thoughts about inactivity

Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, withoutpassions, without business, without diversion, without effort. Then he feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his weakness,his emptiness. 

(Pascal, The Pensees, 1660/1950, p. 57).              

David Hume on how to stop overthinking

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

From David Hume's Treatise on Human Nature