People, like animals, react painfully to unfinished business and are ready to go to great lengths to get rid of them.
Suppose you are expecting guests in the evening. You tidied up the house, removed the scattered objects, figured out how to entertain everyone, cooked food and bought drinks. Everything is ready, although there is an hour left before the guests arrive. It would seem that this is a great time to do something else, but paradoxically, this time is not felt by most people as free. We're already busy; we're throwing a party, even if there is an hour before it starts. This hour has already been reserved by our consciousness, so we cannot use it for another task. Instead, we are busy waiting for guests to arrive. Some people in such a situation cannot even read a book and constantly look at the clock, wishing that the event finally happened. This is the simplest fixation demonstration from the book Mental Traps» André Kukla, published by the publishing house Alpina.
The stakes go up when it comes to studying or working, because when preparing for exams or planning work tasks, an hour is a huge amount of time. As Maxim Dorofeev wrote in The Jedi Techniques of the MYTH publishing house, one small meeting scheduled for the middle of the day can easily ruin some people the whole day, because neither before nor after it they are unable to do anything seriously. Before the meeting, the time needs to be filled with something, because the fact of an approaching event acts on the nerves (fixation effect), and after that it seems that it is too late to do something useful, because it takes more time ( uneconomical thinking, saying that serious things can only be done in a few hours and nothing else). As a result, the day is lost, although there is no logical explanation for this.
Some people, who rarely go on vacation or business trips, begin to prepare for a few days and postpone everything until the return period, because they are already "busy", they have almost left. Others make long lists of tasks, hoping that it will discipline them, but in fact, the excitement of the incompleteness of each of them accumulates until the anxiety and pressure caused by this does not turn the person into a neurotic. All of these startling reactions arise from the way a person perceives unfinished business.
History of the issue
Man is not the only creature that behaves so illogically when faced with unfinished business. Animals have what is called displaced activity. Researchers have found that if an animal cannot start or complete an action, or it has a conflict of motivations (for example, two hyena dogs collide on the border of their territories and do not know what to do - attack or run), animals begin to engage in meaningless substitute actions that are completely inappropriate for the situation, for example, they spin, wash, dig holes, and so on. Hyena dogs in the described case begin to run and dig in the ground. Quite witty and simply, the displaced activity is described in the video blog "Everything is like the animals":
Procrastination: hello from the inner hamster
In a person, the conflict between several important tasks or the fear of making a decision causes the familiar procrastination, that is, putting things off for later and / or replacing them with diligently doing something else like writing texts, reading social networks, cooking cupcakes or exercising with heavy weights.
But inappropriate behavior when it is impossible to complete the work started is the fixation effect. When you make an appointment, you mark it in your head as a task to be completed, like “starting” it, but at the same time you do not have the opportunity to immediately complete it, or even begin to complete it, which causes concern. You are not actually doing anything, but the wait is seriously exhausting. The stress is especially strong if the task is greatly extended in time - for example, you are treating your teeth by scheduling a series of visits to the dentist, or working on tasks where their completion depends not only on you, but also on others ( many can wait half a day for an answer, unable to do other things at this time).
The behavior of a person facing unfinished tasks was studied by Kurt Levin together with his team of researchers - Maria Ovsyankina, Bluma Zeigarnik, Vera Mahler and others. In the course of experiments, they found that a person has big problems with unfinished business, and even with absolutely meaningless. That is why, by the way, many project managers strive to complete the most hopeless and even unprofitable project instead of abandoning it, because unfinished business creates internal dissatisfaction.
Levin's assistant and our compatriot Maria Ovsyankina conducted a simple experiment: she gave adults a boring and useless task - to put together a figurine from cut parts. When the subject completed about half of the task, she interrupted him and asked him to do a second, unrelated to the previous one. At the same time, she covered the incompletely assembled figure with a newspaper. It turned out that after completing the second task, 86% of the subjects wanted to return to the first interrupted task and complete it, and the inability to do this increased the heart rate and had other psychophysiological effects. The researcher changed tasks, but the result remained the same. Kurt Lewin was extremely surprised by the findings. “Why do adults, having started such a stupid job as folding figures, want to return to her? After all, there is no interest or encouragement! "He wondered. As a result, Levin concluded that people have a need to complete any, even meaningless task. So the numerous proverbs and folk wisdom that what we started is worth finishing is not just a call to the virtue of labor, but also a consequence of our painful relationship with unfinished business.
In addition, Bluma Zeigarnik discovered what is now called the Zeigarnik effect. Her experiments showed that a person remembers unfinished business much better than completed ones. When we finish a task, we very quickly lose interest in it, while unfinished tasks remain in our memory for much longer. Not only do we suffer from unfinished business, but we are also unable to get them out of our heads. This also explains, for example, why people finish reading bad books, although they do not give them any pleasure. You can break the system if you stop doing this. In his book Intention, Will and Need, Levin gives the following example: “Someone immersed himself in reading a stupid newspaper novel, but did not finish it to the end. This romance could haunt him for years. "
What to do about it
Even Kurt Levin, with Vera Mahler and other researchers, tried to figure out how to overcome anxiety and suffering from unfinished business. In his book, Kurt Lewin included the chapter "Substitutional Doing", where he described how the stress of unfinished business can be avoided by doing another, but similar in meaning, occupation. For example, he noticed that interrupted drawing or storytelling activities cease to bother the person if he begins to draw something differently or tell the story in a different way. By the way, the researcher also wrote that “surrogate execution” shows an excellent effect, when a person delegates a task to another (and puts a tick “done” in his head), or even imitates the execution of the case. For example, you marked yourself to buy something, but instead of buying you go to the store, tick the box and so muffle the inner voice that gets on your nerves. Most interestingly, observing someone working on a similar task or completing it also creates a sense of relaxation.
It is very important for a modern person to understand that he will have to exist among unfinished business, and this is normal. Moreover, some cases ultimately need to be left unfinished, because they are no longer relevant or have not justified themselves. Many, for example, completely in vain experience feelings of guilt and inconvenience, remembering how they began to play the harmonica or studied the art of the Renaissance, and then quit. If a hobby doesn't live up to expectations, you don't have to torture yourself in order to "get it done."
Highlighting the points of the plan in red perfectly creates internal panic, but it will not speed up the completion of tasks (except at the initial stage, after which a nervous breakdown or procrastination will follow). This is especially true for those who have started a business that is extended over time - learning a new language or a professional field, creating their own games, comics, courses, conducting serious large-scale projects.
In this case, you will have to live for a long time under the huge shadow of an unfinished project. Being in a dead end and horror from the unfinished, a person even lying on the sofa "is in the process", not resting, unable to do something useful and at the same time terribly straining. It helps to clearly identify intermediate stages, the achievement of which causes relief, a sense of progress.
It is important to realize that many important tasks can be completed by starting them in intervals of 20-30 minutes, and it is not at all necessary to wait until you free up a long time slot. Having a couple of hours during which no one bothers you is a great luxury. And if you do something for half an hour a day, by the end of the week you will have a huge amount of time. It is likely that by taking advantage of such "temporary filings", you will get a lot of work while you wait for guests, a meeting, or a term paper check.
Maxim Dorofeev writes that because of the fixation effect, you will not take the opportunity to do something else ("oh, I can't, I'm learning English / meeting guests / preparing for a meeting, I'll just finish .. . "), and then you will suffer from lack of time. Unfortunately, it will not be possible to completely get rid of internal tension, but you can alleviate the situation if you consciously switch to similar activities and catch yourself in the process of useless waiting.
Suppose you are expecting guests in the evening. You tidied up the house, removed the scattered objects, figured out how to entertain everyone, cooked food and bought drinks. Everything is ready, although there is an hour left before the guests arrive. It would seem that this is a great time to do something else, but paradoxically, this time is not felt by most people as free. We're already busy; we're throwing a party, even if there is an hour before it starts. This hour has already been reserved by our consciousness, so we cannot use it for another task. Instead, we are busy waiting for guests to arrive. Some people in such a situation cannot even read a book and constantly look at the clock, wishing that the event finally happened. This is the simplest fixation demonstration from the book Mental Traps» André Kukla, published by the publishing house Alpina.
The stakes go up when it comes to studying or working, because when preparing for exams or planning work tasks, an hour is a huge amount of time. As Maxim Dorofeev wrote in The Jedi Techniques of the MYTH publishing house, one small meeting scheduled for the middle of the day can easily ruin some people the whole day, because neither before nor after it they are unable to do anything seriously. Before the meeting, the time needs to be filled with something, because the fact of an approaching event acts on the nerves (fixation effect), and after that it seems that it is too late to do something useful, because it takes more time ( uneconomical thinking, saying that serious things can only be done in a few hours and nothing else). As a result, the day is lost, although there is no logical explanation for this.
Some people, who rarely go on vacation or business trips, begin to prepare for a few days and postpone everything until the return period, because they are already "busy", they have almost left. Others make long lists of tasks, hoping that it will discipline them, but in fact, the excitement of the incompleteness of each of them accumulates until the anxiety and pressure caused by this does not turn the person into a neurotic. All of these startling reactions arise from the way a person perceives unfinished business.
History of the issue
Man is not the only creature that behaves so illogically when faced with unfinished business. Animals have what is called displaced activity. Researchers have found that if an animal cannot start or complete an action, or it has a conflict of motivations (for example, two hyena dogs collide on the border of their territories and do not know what to do - attack or run), animals begin to engage in meaningless substitute actions that are completely inappropriate for the situation, for example, they spin, wash, dig holes, and so on. Hyena dogs in the described case begin to run and dig in the ground. Quite witty and simply, the displaced activity is described in the video blog "Everything is like the animals":
Procrastination: hello from the inner hamster
In a person, the conflict between several important tasks or the fear of making a decision causes the familiar procrastination, that is, putting things off for later and / or replacing them with diligently doing something else like writing texts, reading social networks, cooking cupcakes or exercising with heavy weights.
But inappropriate behavior when it is impossible to complete the work started is the fixation effect. When you make an appointment, you mark it in your head as a task to be completed, like “starting” it, but at the same time you do not have the opportunity to immediately complete it, or even begin to complete it, which causes concern. You are not actually doing anything, but the wait is seriously exhausting. The stress is especially strong if the task is greatly extended in time - for example, you are treating your teeth by scheduling a series of visits to the dentist, or working on tasks where their completion depends not only on you, but also on others ( many can wait half a day for an answer, unable to do other things at this time).
The behavior of a person facing unfinished tasks was studied by Kurt Levin together with his team of researchers - Maria Ovsyankina, Bluma Zeigarnik, Vera Mahler and others. In the course of experiments, they found that a person has big problems with unfinished business, and even with absolutely meaningless. That is why, by the way, many project managers strive to complete the most hopeless and even unprofitable project instead of abandoning it, because unfinished business creates internal dissatisfaction.
Levin's assistant and our compatriot Maria Ovsyankina conducted a simple experiment: she gave adults a boring and useless task - to put together a figurine from cut parts. When the subject completed about half of the task, she interrupted him and asked him to do a second, unrelated to the previous one. At the same time, she covered the incompletely assembled figure with a newspaper. It turned out that after completing the second task, 86% of the subjects wanted to return to the first interrupted task and complete it, and the inability to do this increased the heart rate and had other psychophysiological effects. The researcher changed tasks, but the result remained the same. Kurt Lewin was extremely surprised by the findings. “Why do adults, having started such a stupid job as folding figures, want to return to her? After all, there is no interest or encouragement! "He wondered. As a result, Levin concluded that people have a need to complete any, even meaningless task. So the numerous proverbs and folk wisdom that what we started is worth finishing is not just a call to the virtue of labor, but also a consequence of our painful relationship with unfinished business.
In addition, Bluma Zeigarnik discovered what is now called the Zeigarnik effect. Her experiments showed that a person remembers unfinished business much better than completed ones. When we finish a task, we very quickly lose interest in it, while unfinished tasks remain in our memory for much longer. Not only do we suffer from unfinished business, but we are also unable to get them out of our heads. This also explains, for example, why people finish reading bad books, although they do not give them any pleasure. You can break the system if you stop doing this. In his book Intention, Will and Need, Levin gives the following example: “Someone immersed himself in reading a stupid newspaper novel, but did not finish it to the end. This romance could haunt him for years. "
What to do about it
Even Kurt Levin, with Vera Mahler and other researchers, tried to figure out how to overcome anxiety and suffering from unfinished business. In his book, Kurt Lewin included the chapter "Substitutional Doing", where he described how the stress of unfinished business can be avoided by doing another, but similar in meaning, occupation. For example, he noticed that interrupted drawing or storytelling activities cease to bother the person if he begins to draw something differently or tell the story in a different way. By the way, the researcher also wrote that “surrogate execution” shows an excellent effect, when a person delegates a task to another (and puts a tick “done” in his head), or even imitates the execution of the case. For example, you marked yourself to buy something, but instead of buying you go to the store, tick the box and so muffle the inner voice that gets on your nerves. Most interestingly, observing someone working on a similar task or completing it also creates a sense of relaxation.
It is very important for a modern person to understand that he will have to exist among unfinished business, and this is normal. Moreover, some cases ultimately need to be left unfinished, because they are no longer relevant or have not justified themselves. Many, for example, completely in vain experience feelings of guilt and inconvenience, remembering how they began to play the harmonica or studied the art of the Renaissance, and then quit. If a hobby doesn't live up to expectations, you don't have to torture yourself in order to "get it done."
Highlighting the points of the plan in red perfectly creates internal panic, but it will not speed up the completion of tasks (except at the initial stage, after which a nervous breakdown or procrastination will follow). This is especially true for those who have started a business that is extended over time - learning a new language or a professional field, creating their own games, comics, courses, conducting serious large-scale projects.
In this case, you will have to live for a long time under the huge shadow of an unfinished project. Being in a dead end and horror from the unfinished, a person even lying on the sofa "is in the process", not resting, unable to do something useful and at the same time terribly straining. It helps to clearly identify intermediate stages, the achievement of which causes relief, a sense of progress.
It is important to realize that many important tasks can be completed by starting them in intervals of 20-30 minutes, and it is not at all necessary to wait until you free up a long time slot. Having a couple of hours during which no one bothers you is a great luxury. And if you do something for half an hour a day, by the end of the week you will have a huge amount of time. It is likely that by taking advantage of such "temporary filings", you will get a lot of work while you wait for guests, a meeting, or a term paper check.
Maxim Dorofeev writes that because of the fixation effect, you will not take the opportunity to do something else ("oh, I can't, I'm learning English / meeting guests / preparing for a meeting, I'll just finish .. . "), and then you will suffer from lack of time. Unfortunately, it will not be possible to completely get rid of internal tension, but you can alleviate the situation if you consciously switch to similar activities and catch yourself in the process of useless waiting.
