New year, new start

People can stop procrastinating and do something at any time, but many choose New Year's

Sunday, January 2, 2005
By Lisa Irizarry
Star-Ledger Staff

This year, Mia Spalding intends to stop using her Step Master exercise equipment as a gathering spot for clothes going to the dry cleaners. She also intends to get the eight credits she needs to finally get her college degree in early childhood education, and to think a little more before she speaks.

"I'm going to put my Step Master in the basement and start exercising on it," pledges the 36-year-old Westfield resident, an administrative assistant in the nursing department at Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth. "I'm just eight credits shy of my college degree, and that's pathetic -- I've been trying to get it for two years.

"But what I'm really going to work on this year is my mouth -- blah, blah, blah. Sometimes I'm too opinionated and voice my opinion when people don't ask. I come off too aggressive and forceful."

Oh, and there is the diet, the mother of two remembers. "I always say I'm going to stick to the Atkins Diet, but I can't get past the third day of the two-week introduction (involving the elimination of carbs)."

Spalding's plans all sound good. Trouble is, they've all sounded good to her many times before. She has made all of these New Year's resolutions in past years and has never stuck to one of them. In fact, she says she has never made good on any New Year's pact she's made with herself in her entire life.

Procrastination -- whether it be for mundane tasks, such as cleaning out the garage, or for monumental changes, such as switching careers in mid-life -- is something everyone experiences, experts say. But it's not something everyone can easily solve.

"It's half a time issue and half of it's making these things a priority -- it's hard to find time for myself," Spalding adds.

Jane Maggio says she, too, is more concerned about everything and everyone else and doesn't see her needs and desires as priorities. She calls herself overweight, even though she is a coordinator for the New Jersey chapter of the Take Off Pounds Sensibly international weight loss support group.

"I've been trying to lose weight since 1966, and I've gotten 5 pounds from my goal many times and then went back up," says the resident of Vernon Township in Sussex County. "I always start off in January and then make it (the resolution) at other times of the year, hoping it will work." She adds, "I'm good at helping other people, but I'm not good at challenging myself. If I give myself a big challenge, it sabotages me."

"The problem is everybody who procrastinates may not have the same dynamic going on," says Beverly Potter of Oakland, Calif., author of "Beating Job Burnout: How to Transform Work Pressure into Productivity" (Crisp Publications, $13.95).

"Procrastinators have a very poor way of accessing how long it takes to do something. They think it will take two hours when it will take 10 hours.

"You can also procrastinate about something as little as making a phone call," Potter notes.

"Everyone procrastinates, though some do it more than others and people procrastinate on different types of things," explains Terry Wall, a workplace expert from Washington Township, Gloucester County. He says that, basically, people find themselves in procrastination mode when faced with a task they find unpleasant or something they don't like doing, or when dealing with something that requires a tough decision.

"It's easier not to do anything," adds Don Blohowiak, an executive coach and management consultant in Princeton Junction. "Part of the problem is we're ambiguous about our goals and we're all just juggling too many things."

"There are a lot of jobs people don't want to do or things they don't want to tackle," adds Elaine Bloom, a professional organizer and president of A Place for Everything in Maplewood. "Particularly in today's society, people are feeling overwhelmed and have very little time. It used to be that work was over at 5, but there's no split anymore between work and home. Today, everybody has a PC, a pager and e-mail or whatever," she says.

Whether in the workplace or in personal life, procrastination can impede progress, experts say. Just getting started can be a major hurdle. It's important to clearly identify the goal, know the steps required to reach it and -- most importantly -- the first move that sets things in motion.

"The ultimate problem is poor self-management," says Bloom. "Not knowing what to do first and what to do second unless your mother is telling you. Don't demand a huge amount of yourself to get started." Break a task into small components and accomplish them one by one, she adds.

"As you get more and more done on a project, you feel like you're gaining momentum," she says. "One particular key to self-management is getting the body into motion. A good self-manager can do the same task as someone with negative self-management, but there's no build up of stress and the final relief."

As director of the Rutgers University staff assistance program, Jeffrey Hoerger counsels about 40 employees a year for whom procrastination is a problem. As a procrastinator who has gotten better at not putting things off, Hoerger says he can relate to the employees.

In fact, Hoerger says, he actually used to get almost a high from starting tasks late and getting them done under extreme pressure. Take his taxes.

"Maybe it was the drama involved," he says.

"I'd do my taxes on April 15 and get to the post office at 11:59 (a minute before they had to be postmarked)." Hoerger notes there were so many procrastinators like himself on tax deadline day that the workers in his Piscataway post office would dress up in Mardi Gras-like costumes to make a joke of the whole thing.

Now that he's almost 50 years old, Hoerger finally has learned to curb his procrastinating tendencies by setting priorities in his work and professional lives.

"I've learned what's important is what's important to me and my family," Hoerger explains. "When you're young, you tend to take on a lot more obligations and volunteer for things -- you take on too much and then you don't want to do any of it."

In his counseling, Hoerger says, he advises procrastinators to remember that whatever it is they're avoiding doing is not going to go away. He says this helps them see a starting point for achieving their goal by first helping them determine what they can take off their plates.

Like Bloom, he says "I try to get them to bring about changes in bite-sized chunks. People get overwhelmed by the enormity of what they have to do and that paralyzes them."

To add to a person's prospects of achieving their goals, Hoerger does a stress workshop in early December in which he asks Rutgers staffers to set their New Year's resolution long before Jan. 1

When big changes are targeted to begin on New Year's Day, he says, "it's almost like you're set up to fail. You're jinxed. Everybody goes out and buys exercise equipment (that they don't use).

"Everybody gets to the point where they need a fresh start. It doesn't have to happen on Jan. 1. It can happen whenever you want to make changes."

(If you like this article, check out the other articles on the Special Edition! page.)