shit or get off the pot

rude slang Either commit to doing something productive or step aside and stop wasting time. As manager of this branch, you are responsible for firing employees who breach company regulations. Shit or get off the pot! You've been going back and forth between the same two models of car for the last two hours—either shit or get off the pot!

see under fish or cut bait.

If someone tells you to shit or get off the pot or to piss or get off the pot, they mean that you should either act now or accept that you will never do something. Time to shit or get off the pot, ain't it, Bud? There is little point in the advertisers threatening the networks any more. The time has come to piss or get off the pot.

Get on with what you’re doing or quit and give someone else a chance; stop putting it off. This metaphor, alluding to a fisherman who ties up the use of a boat or rod when he could at least be preparing bait for others to use, originated in nineteenth-century politics. It appeared in the Congressional Record in 1876, when Congressman Joseph P. Cannon, telling the Democrats to vote on a bill that would legalize the silver dollar, said, “I want you gentlemen on the other side of the House to ‘fish or cut bait.’” A ruder twentieth-century American version is shit or get off the pot.