Cherry Hill Courier Post

Put off career plans and you're bound to stay put

By ANDREA KAY
Gannett News Service
March 3, 2006

Have you ever started something and not finished it? You're not the only one. In fact, that seems to be how many people operate, especially when it comes to ideas or goals they believe will enhance their careers.

Take the lawyer who came to me with a list of issues he wanted to work on to improve his performance and the likelihood he'd make partner at his firm, something he said he wanted more than anything in the world.

"Really?" I asked him, describing the work it would require, the time commitment and cost. "Yes, I'm willing to do whatever it takes," he promised.

Yet a few weeks into the process, he always had an excuse for not doing work I assigned him. He was "busy," or something. Eventually he kept rescheduling and canceling meetings. Today, he still toils away at his job without the title he so covets.

A woman from the South wrote me recently saying, "I've been dreaming, hoping, wishing, longing to move West for six years." She said she had bought my book on how to find a new job in a different city, but never finished it, assuring me, "Please don't take that personally, I never ever finish anything."

Not completing something is a form of procrastination, says John Seeley, author of "Get UnStuck!" The Simple Guide to Restart Your Life, and procrastination often has to do with perfectionism. You feel you have to do everything perfectly and put off something until you can do it just right, he says. "Being human, by definition, means we are imperfect beings, this can be quite a trap."

People also don't want to look bad. The woman from the South told me that "unfortunately, I never hear anything positive about the employment scene there. People out there tell me you couldn't even get a job at a mini-mart."

She says she "would be willing to move there tomorrow provided I had the finances and a job to back me up." In other words, she'd do it -- but only if things could be perfectly lined up and she wouldn't look bad for not even being able to get a job at a mini-mart.

Another woman wrote saying she always wanted to start her own newlywed magazine because when she got married three years ago, "there was nothing else out there for this readership."

Aside from some planning, she says she didn't follow through. She recently read an article about a similar magazine being launched this summer and is kicking herself. "I'm so disappointed I didn't follow through with my instincts and goals a year ago!" she told me.

People get in the way of themselves, says Patricia Farrell, psychologist and author of "How to Be Your Own Therapist." They fear failure and usually attribute the failure to finish to something that is out of their control. Or they can't handle success or failure.

"Success means you'll have to keep on producing and if you can't, then it's better not to put yourself in harm's way," she suggests.

Are you one of those people who plunked down money for a class, video or audiotapes or consulting, and then never did anything with it? Is all the tedious preliminary work you did on a project to meet a goal gathering dust while the idea hovers and the guilt builds?

Ask yourself: What circumstances need to exist to do something with this? What do I need to do to make those circumstances possible? Will those circumstances ever be possible? If it's unlikely those circumstances will ever be perfect, am I willing to go forward anyway?

Stop wishing and start deciding how much time you're willing to invest and get it on your calendar. Then you can quit kicking yourself and commending yourself for following through on what you wanted in the first place.

Andrea Kay is the author of "Life's a Bitch and Then You Change Careers: 9 Steps to Get Out of Your Funk and On To Your Future."
Send questions to her at:
2692 Madison Road, No. 133, Cincinnati, Ohio 45208;
www.andreakay.com.
E-mail: andrea@andreakay.com
Published: March 03. 2006 3:00AM