If you are at manual labor in your room and it comes time to pray, do not say: ‘I will use up my supply of branches or finish weaving the little basket, and then I will rise,’ but rise immediately and render to God the prayer that is owed [God]. Otherwise, little by little you come to neglect your prayer and your duty habitually, and your soul will become a wasteland devoid of every spiritual and bodily work. For right at the beginning your will is apparent.
Hugh Feiss, Essential Monastic Wisdom: Writings on the Contemplative Life, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1999), p.40.