JUST CHILL: A better work-life balance figures in most New Year resolutions

Periodically at this time of year I use this space to share New Year’s resolutions from readers, and to make a few myself. Second only to weight loss, work/life balance is a constant theme when we make our lists each December, and every year I hear the same determined goals: Travel less. Find time for lunch. Read a novel. Take a watercolour class. Turn off the laptop by 9 pm.

There is something cleansing about the process, the reflecting on the year that was, the turning onto a fresh page. There is also something vaguely depressing about it.

In part this is because the making of resolutions feels too much like a measure of what you haven’t done and who you haven’t been over the past year. And in part it’s because we keep making the same resolutions over and over, expending energy but not getting anywhere.

“My New Year’s resolution in 2004 was to meditate to help improve my stress levels,” writes Lisa Johnson, who owns a pilates studio in Brookline, Massachusetts, in a recent e-mail. “I did it twice. My New Year’s resolution in 2005 was to meditate again. I did it about six times (a 300 per cent increase!). Sensing failure, my New Year’s resolution in 2006 was to take four weeks vacation. I took two weeks, which was about the same as the year before.”

It’s not that Johnson does not understand the importance of a balanced life — quite the opposite. She spends much of her time, she says, making sure that her employees are balanced. “I work with them to make sure they don’t burn out. That means I get to cover their vacations and sick days and any other issues that pop up.”

As a result, she says: “I have these little meltdowns where I need to just hide under the covers for a while until I recover. Does hiding under the covers count as meditation?”

Jody Ordioni, president of Brandemiz, an employee recruitment firm in Manhattan, shares much the same story. For 2007, her resolutions include such things as doing “two personal things” for herself every day, “whether it’s a manicure, a window-shopping trip around the corner, a walk with the dogs, or time spent with a sandwich reading a book.” She also plans to make “one personal call each day to a friend just to chat,” and get a weekly manicure and pedicure.”

Determined woman. But then she adds: “I’ve tried this before. I even work from home two days each week to better attempt balance. But I just work longer hours and feel guilty for the time in the shower.”

Robert Butterworth is not surprised. A psychologist in Los Angeles, he has been on an antiresolution crusade for the last eight years. “Most people make the same New Year’s resolutions year after year with no discernible results,” he says. “It’s stressful problem solving with everyone watching.”

Butterworth estimates that 80 per cent of our resolutions have slipped by January 24. And he has theories about why. “We make too many,” he says. “They are too long range and all encompassing. They are too unrealistic or dramatic.”

To increase our odds, he suggests that we start by making only one resolution at a time. Then, redefine success. Instead of trying for a 180-degree change, start with a 45-degree goal. Finally, don’t count the number of days you fail along the way, but rather the number of days you succeed.

Gail Wiggin is not a psychologist, but she has reached the same conclusion as Butterworth. As a web designer, she has come to see black as merely a series of numbers (00 00 00) and white as just a string of letters (FF FF FF). For years, she says, her resolutions have been black and white. “All or nothing,” she says. “Things like ‘never have a cup of coffee again.’ ” But looked at in terms of hexadecimal codes, she says, “All the colour is in between.” This coming year, she says, “Maybe I’ll try to have a little less coffee some of the time. Or mix the caf with the decaf.”

Inspired by Wiggin, that is my resolution. Not to cut back on caffeine, but to live in the in-between. I have pledged, too many times, to exercise often, to keep my office perfectly organised, to pause from work regularly and pick my children up from school. The list has become not a map to improvement but a list of ways to kick myself for failing.

So this year I will try to exercise “more,” to keep my office “more or less” organised, to pick up the boys “as often as I can.” To set goals of maybe and sometimes, rather than always and absolute.