Talkers and Feelers
We have become a society that has come to the flawed conclusion that talking is as good as doing.
Perhaps this is because we have inadvertently equated talking with thinking.
Of course it is easy to see the flaw in this when we stop and look at it directly. If all talk came out of good thinking, it would also connect with clear and good actions. But often talk is a substitute for the deeper thinking necessary to act intelligently and correctly — even if the action is to restrain from acting or talking about things just in the abstract.
Of the three: talking, feeling, and doing, it is really only doing that is strongly linked to time.
The time it takes to say or feel something is often either fleeting or a constant mental activity on a mostly disconnected parallel-tract with reality.
On the other hand, the activity of doing and the time it takes to carefully think through and then execute a plan usually requires the greatest time expenditure. The harder something is to accomplish, the more time usually required to do it correctly and well. In addition, this is where the most productive among us are able to quiet their emotions and mental distractions in order to focus their sizable mental energies on the task at hand. They can lose their awareness of the passage of time and find themselves at the still point.
When someone tells me something having to do with future intentions, then all I need to do is patiently wait to see whether or not they really mean what they say by seeing what they decide to do and then watching them get started. It is in these areas of life where conversations can bare most fruit.