Shut down Complete + Zeigarnik Effect
Zeigarnik Effect: Incomplete tasks will continue to dominate our attention. It tells us that if you simply stop whatever you are doing at five p.m. and declare, “I’m done with work until tomorrow,” you’ll likely struggle to keep your mind clear of professional issues, as the many obligations left unresolved in your mind will keep battling for our attention throughout the evening.
Shut Down Complete: When you’re done, have a set phrase you say that indicates completion (To end my own ritual, I say, “Shutdown complete”). It provides a simple cue to your mind that it’s safe to release work-related thoughts for the rest of the day.
At the end of the workday, shut down our consideration of work issues until the next morning – no after dinner email check, no mental replays of conversations, and no scheming about how you’ll handle an upcoming challenge; shutdown work thinking completely. If you need more time, then extend your workday, but once you shut down, your mind must be left free.
As any busy knowledge worker can attest, there are always tasks left incomplete. The idea that you can ever reach a point where all your obligations are handled is a fantasy. Fortunately, we don’t need to complete a task to get it off our minds.
The psychologist Roy Baumeister, who wrote a paper with E.J. Masicampo playfully titled “ Consider It Done!” In this study , the two researchers began by replicating the Zeigarnik effect in their subjects (in this case, the researchers assigned a task and then cruelly engineered interruptions), but then found that they could significantly reduce the effect’s impact by asking the subjects, soon after the interruption, to make a plan for how they would later complete the incomplete task. To quote the paper: “Committing to a specific plan for a goal may therefore not only facilitate attainment of the goal but may also free cognitive resources for other pursuits.”
This ritual ensures that no task will be forgotten: Each will be reviewed daily and tackled when the time is appropriate. Your mind, in other words, is released from its duty to keep track of these obligations at every moment.
Your mind takes a lot of mental energy to constantly think about the incomplete task.
Write down the task, time, date, and location you’re going to resume the task. By writing down the task you need to work on. Your mind no longer needs to constantly think about the incomplete task. Your mind can finally get some rest.
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