Another interesting way to interpret this is that perhaps the Zeigarnik effect is a good description of the "psychological" cost of unpaid technical debt. For instance, during any project at my job I run into at least 5 things -- bugs, code improvements, components I could build to make this task easier -- and I jot them down. When I finish, I move on to the next feature, and that list grows to 10, then 15, then 30... the anxiety that "man I really need to fix this shitty codebase" actually affects me psychologically in tangible ways, and IMO is one of the under-talked about aspects of ignoring technical and design debt.
What the article doesn't mention is to use this effect as a tactic to get going in the morning: Plan your day so that you stop in the middle of an interesting task at the end of the day. I find it's effortless for me to pick it up the next morning.
I used this technique for my lunch break -- with great results. Before I took the break, I was very motivated to finish the project I was working on. But I decided to leave it unfinished. After lunch, I started right back again without 'lost time' checking my email and such.
Given that the site is so engineered to make me click, share, and otherwise engage, I have a hard time trusting the content. Is it written for accuracy? Or for virality?
Hi, Alina. This is not a dig on your work, but mainly a comment about the site.
Sure, I believe you did a lot of research. But then the article could have been written to maximize accuracy or to maximize virality.
I write a lot, and there's a big difference between the styles. For some topics, that can translate into a big difference in the content of an article.
Productivity is definitely prone to that. There's a whole genre known as "productivity porn", so called because some people feel compelled to look at it far beyond actual utility.
Right from the title of the article, I was put on guard. The word "unlock" indicates minor action will bring great improvement, freeing me from possibly-unsuspected constraints. Who wouldn't want that? Then we get three awesome, hard-to-reach states in a row. Next a mysterious sciencey-sounding effect named after somebody I've never heard of but who has an intriguing name. It's a perfect productivity porn title.
When I clicked through, my skepticism was increased. On my phone, the first thing I saw was a bunch of share buttons with some needy, manipulative copy to get me to click them. There's a big stock photo of a pretty woman that conveys zero actual information. There were a modest number of short, upbeat paragraphs broken up with large titles. There are what I'm sure were links to other productivity articles in the body. There's relatively little subtlety, and a concluding paragraph that dubiously hates on the 8-hour work day. Then we get a paragraph trolling for comments, which increase stickiness. And then more share buttons with the same manipulative copy.
I understand that this is a popular way to build a profitable content business these days. But I also understand that "profitable content business" and "reliable source of high-integrity, low-drama journalism" are poorly correlated. No matter how solid your writing and how true your heart, the context and the constraints of written-for-virality prose make me skeptical. Too many other people writing for similar sites and with similar structures have written excessively upbeat, low-thought articles for me to trust ones on this site without doing a lot more due diligence than I normally will for a quick morning read.
there's no great mystery to any of this, and what the article is saying is rather obvious (we remember the stuff we didn't finish yet - no shit!) but I just don't see all these cynical intent concerns you have.
That's not cynicism. That's just reverse engineering a content business.
I worked in publishing in the 90s, including doing some print design. I've done a fair bit of UI and information design since then. And I helped start a successful modern content business. Plus I write pretty much every day.
I'm not saying anybody there intends to be evil. I'm sure they're all very nice. I'm saying that they're embedded in a business context that shapes behavior. The incentives work strongly against thoughtful, sober journalism, and toward high-viral, high-click, high-engagement content that stimulates a need without ever really satisfying that.
Reading through this and a couple of other articles (presumably yours)... yes, I see that research was done; but that it was largely superficial, summarizing marginally interesting content from a few different sources.
As GP noted, it seems more focused on link-garnering than providing in-depth information.
Really? Then why do you never even mention, that oftentimes this effect could not be replicated in experiments by other psychologists?
Or that the effect was even the exact opposite in some experiments?
Why? Till now, nobody knows, but to write a blogpost, that does state this effect as fact is quite a stretch, when saying a lot of research went into it.
Sorry to be that harsh, but what I told my students oftentimes is, that time of research does not always equal quality of research.
I was going to mention this, the site engaged me really quickly. There are 4 tabs open currently... which is rare for me.
Except I took a different take away, if they were intelligent enough to use their advice for their own practical matters, their advice must have some relevancy to it.
I definitely notice that effect personally. The problem is, I often find myself easily distracted (e.g. opening HN!) when faced with a hard problem or a "mental wall". It really hinders my ability to finish tasks sometimes. What do you do to help you focus on tasks, specifically hard ones?
There are a number of things you can do to stay focused and on task. Some of them you probably already do.
The first is to simply have a clearly defined goal. While this is obvious, it is also easy to miss. If we don't have a clearly defined task, we don't know whether or not we've completed it.
But even if you have a clearly defined goal, it can still be easy to get distracted. There are two primary reasons for this. The first: If you don't know what the next step is, it can be difficult to stay focused. The next time you get stuck, ask yourself how clearly you know what your next step is. If you're not sure what to do, then make sure you spend the time figuring that out.
But what if you have a clear goal, and you know exactly what you need to do, but you're still not staying focused?
Then you've probably got a motivation problem. The way to deal with this is pretty straight forward. Simply spend time thinking about the reasons it is important to complete the task, or achieve the goal. Don't try to trick yourself here. Be honest. If you can't find any good enough reasons to stay focused, then maybe you should be doing something else.
In summary: Have a clearly defined goal. Make sure you know exactly what you're next step is. And make sure you have the proper motivation.
If you're interested in this stuff, I recommend reading about the "mental contrasting" technique, as well as the book "Succeed" by Heidi Grant Halvorson.
Related, I like to leave non-working code or tests at the end of a day so I can easily find where I left off. For some reason when I try to build / test and the errors pop up I'm able to immediately pick up where I left off. A combination of a bookmark and the Zeigarnik Effect I guess?
This probably explains "earworms" (songs that get stuck in your head) as well. Usually the hook that repeats doesn't have a musical resolution, and/or you can't remember how the song ends. Just hearing or imagining a single chord that sounds final can help get rid of them.
Great article, except for the last paragraph. The duration that you work has little to do with your reward structure. If you had a one hour workday, at any time of your choosing, but were then paid cash afterwards, you'd still nullify the effect.
If anything, I think the effect is an indictment of hourly wages, as opposed to salary or some other outcome-based compensation.
Great observation! It's not about the duration of the 8-hour work day though, but the concept of it. It's about doing something for a specific amount of time and then receiving a pre-established monetary reward. You're right, it could be a one-hour or five-hour workday. It just happens that in our days it's an 8-hour workday/40-hr. work-week.
>The waiters seemed to remember complex orders that allowed them to deliver the right combination of food to the tables, yet the information vanished as the food was delivered.
That could use some elaboration. If she was just watching them, how did she know the information vanished?
Great insight! I wouldn't have thought about it this way, although I can think of quite a few instances where this approach would have been more than helpful!
