Learning to Not Be Late
The procrastinators advance across green lawns toward the Pierce College classroom, seeking salvation and looking sheepish.
They are late.
A class titled “How to Stop Procrastinating” is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. on a warm, lazy Saturday. Twenty students are registered. Three arrive on time. One is a reporter writing a column that originally was going to be written six months ago--a legacy from a previous columnist who really meant to get to it last year.
Instructor Barbara Cheresnick-Rosenbaum, 38, has been waiting 15 minutes. She is a Woodland Hills psychologist and creator of “Video Aspirin,” a videotape she describes as an antidote to stress “the natural way, without drugs, for only $14.95.”
Rosenbaum wears a purple ensemble: dress, nails, high heels. She has a formidable air of confidence and self-discipline, a diminutive exorcist ready to battle the demons of sloth and lethargy.
Rosenbaum’s watch is an hour fast. This is not part of some high-powered time management strategy, however. She confesses that she has put off resetting the watch since daylight-saving time ended.
Someone mistakenly has scheduled Rosenbaum’s class in the same room where a marketing class is in progress. The marketing students react with loud contempt, evidently unacquainted with poet Pablo Neruda’s sentiment that “there is nothing more beautiful than wasting time.” They jeer as Rosenbaum and their instructor discuss the mix-up:
“That class was last year.”
“They put it off.”
“Do it tomorrow.”
The procrastinators retreat to a classroom next door. Eight in all, they include senior citizens and college students, hardened veterans and rookie offenders.
Max is a lanky, folksy government engineer with gray hair beneath a baseball cap. His wife signed him up. Max accuses himself of being a workaholic and putting off fun things, such as vacations to Hawaii and target practice with his pistol. He quotes Clint Eastwood: “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Donna, the tanned mother of a tyrannical, insomniac 3-year-old, exudes health but complains that motherhood has put her fitness program on permanent hold. She calls procrastination the family vice. “You know the rabbit in ‘Alice in Wonderland’--’I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date?’ That’s the story of my life.”
The procrastinators swap war stories about their battles with time. One woman says she combines exercise with walking her two large dogs. Max exercises at work whenever nature calls, climbing six flights of stairs to the farthest possible restroom. And he strengthens his shooting muscles by hoisting his briefcase repeatedly as he walks to and from the corner where he meets his van pool; he rises to demonstrate.
Max again rises when Diana, the young divorcee on his right, explains that she is emotionally scarred because she grew up in a family where nobody ever “gave me a hug and told me everything was OK.”
“You want a hug?” Max says. “I’ll give you a hug. Everyone should get a hug.”
Max and Diana hug. Everyone beams. Rosenbaum says, “Isn’t that great?”
Then Concepcion, who sits on Max’s left, discusses the hardships of living alone. Max wastes no time, asking, “Do you want a hug, too?”
Concepcion complies, somewhat hesitantly. Everyone beams. Just as it looks as if a hugging melee might break out, Rosenbaum gets back on track.
She explains that procrastination results from anxiety, paralyzing perfectionism and the understandable desire to postpone unpleasant tasks. She instructs the class to map out their priorities on paper. She tells them to imagine themselves very old, asking them what--years from now--they would think they gained and lost if they stopped procrastinating now.
“I’m not Einstein,” she says. “But I can give you some good, practical suggestions.”
Rosenbaum recommends that students construct schedules on daily, weekly and monthly matrices. The leatherbound Cadillac of personal organizers is available in stores for $175, a portable reminder that time is money.
Rosenbaum also punctuates the self-help jargon with a touch of the drill sergeant.
“Repeat after me,” she commands, pacing in front of the room. “It’s OK to be less than perfect!”
It’s also OK to be a bit ruthless, apparently.
As the students shed the shackles of aimlessness and transform themselves into hard-charging, agenda-toting uebermenschen, they will have to step on some toes.
“So what do you delete from this schedule because it’s too full?” she asks. “Other people. Delete others. Learn to say no.”
Practice on strangers, she says. Take no guff from telephone salespeople.
Then unleash a stern new assertiveness on pushy friends, demanding relatives, even children.
“I have lots of friends,” Rosenbaum says. She explains how she recently applied a verbal stiff-arm to one friend who was intent on a marathon telephone chat.
“She was a little upset. But I felt great. I had done something for me .”
After class, Max buys an $8.95 audio cassette version of “Video Aspirin.” He is in his 60s, old enough to have seen a daughter graduate from Princeton, young enough to have decided that the procrastination has got to stop.
“Just spending three hours today talking about it has helped,” Max says.
He heads off into the night: a satisfied student, proud father, philosophical procrastinator--a man who knows his limitations and who plans on getting around to doing something about them one day.
