Unfinished things nag at us
How to use incomplete work as a motivator
If you’ve ever put aside a project without finishing it, only to have it nagging at you days or months later, you’ve experienced the Zeigarnik Effect. In 1927, Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik ran a series of experiments using jigsaw puzzles. The results showed that people are much more likely to remember tasks they don’t complete.
This tendency explains why unfinished projects may have a disproportionate hold on us. And maybe explains why completed projects that once consumed us sometimes fade startling speed.
I once drew up a list of every project I’ve left undone. I looked at it, counted about two dozen, and thought: oh, geez. It was at first a deflating exercise. “Get used to the bear behind you,” Werner Herzog says. I saw a few bears on my list — projects that follow me, a little menacing in certain lights. Unfinished projects have a distinct, indisputable power. But it’s not necessarily all negative or looming. They aren’t all bears.
Unfinished pieces are also suggestive. Their empty shelves or unwritten episodes leave room for the imagination — how will they turn out (if they do?) They’re wild — they could still take a turn in a different or unexpected direction if a gust of interest comes back to them.
Not always, but sometimes, unfinished means open, still coming to work every day, wondering about the next development. In those cases, unfinished may be a bear, but it’s a bear called hope.
The Zeigarnik effect indirectly reminds me of advice given to writers to end their writing sessions with a half-finished sentence or paragraph, so they can seamlessly get back to what they’re writing the next time they sit down. Could this trick function equally well for other types of projects? I think so. (Excepting work that has time-sensitive materials like cement or batter or really anything that you can’t expect to find as you left it 24 hours ago.) Have you ever tried this — stopping mid-task explicitly so that when you come back, it’s easier to jump back in? Did it work for you?
