Franklin contrasts diligence with sloth to show how habits of action can shape the difficulty of a task. Steady effort helps people make progress, solve problems and prevent small obstacles from becoming larger ones. Difficulties may still exist, but disciplined work makes them more manageable over time.

Sloth has the opposite effect. Delay, avoidance and inactivity can allow responsibilities to accumulate, deadlines to become more pressing and problems to grow more complicated. Franklin’s point is therefore not simply that hard work is virtuous, but that inaction can actively create difficulties that might otherwise have been avoided. The saying presents diligence as both a practical and a moral habit: sustained effort helps remove obstacles, while neglect often adds new ones. Its broader lesson is that many difficulties are influenced not only by circumstances, but also by how promptly and consistently a person responds to them.