Scenario: You have a five page proposal to prepare for your company due at the end of next business week, and three days have already passed since you received the appointment. At this time, you worry that you will not complete the task, but still seem to convince yourself that you can put it off one more day, struggling to find the right motivation. How can you tackle your procrastination?

First, visualize the end result and get excited about it! In other words, picture the weight off your shoulders when you print the proposal. Imagine the smell of freshly printed paper and the smile on your boss’s face when you turn in the assignment. It seems menial, but it does work. If you can  visualize and anticipate the end goal, the task becomes interesting and the motivation increases.

Second, employ the Zeigarnik effect,  named after Russian Psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik. According to an article in PSYBLOG, the Zeigarnik effect tackles procrastination by encouraging victims to just start somewhere, anywhere. In the case of the above scenario, try drafting an outline on the main points in the proposal, or try typing the first couple of sentences. Often the hardest part of a project  is taking the initial step – once that is over it is much easier to get on a roll and ride it all the way out.

Third, set daily goals. If you cannot hold yourself accountable, have a co-worker or public calendar keep you accountable. I find the latter choice more desirable since everyone else also has their own “stuff” going on. If you publicly display goals on  a calendar with a box to check next to it (), you will be more compelled to complete the task. This makes the task be visible to everyone else so that you will feel accountable for completing that day’s portion of the proposal. Furthermore, it also will give you a sense of accomplishment once you can check the box. This will definitely motivate you – I know it works for me.

Happy exterminating the pesky procrastination bug!

Monkey Brain and Holidays
The Buddhist concept of monkey brain is a brain that swings from idea to idea. Like the lovable apes, we land on an idea only to be distracted to a new one. Here’s how the monkey showed up in my brain this week: I have a great idea for the Performance Management presentation. Wonder when the compensation info will be ready? I must send that package to Rick. Don’t forget to send out the team reports!Talk to Peter- do we really want to have two parties? What do we do about cards this year?

The drawbacks outweigh the benefits of monkey brain. First, any focus on things I really need to do is interrupted. The must do’s take longer. Second, monkey brain simmers a low level of anxiety as a result of its nagging reminders of what I haven’t done or could do. It damages the clarity of the present. Finally, monkey brain uses energy that could be put to productive use.

You may be better than me at focus and discipline. If yes, I admire you. It’s difficult for me all the time- and more so at this time of year. That’s why I was fascinated by the ideas in Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney (2011).  It’s full of useful and proven insights. But when hectic meets end of year crazy; I found the chapters on monkey brain and what to do about it to be particularly helpful.

The Zeigarnik Effect
The Zeigarnik Effect is named for a Russian psychology student you may never have heard of -Bluma Zeigarnik. You may have heard of her famous mentor, Kurt Lewin. Together, they investigated a question: Does the human memory draw a distinction between finished and unfinished business?  Their result is known as The Zeigarnet Effect: Uncompleted tasks and unmet goals will continue to pop up into human minds.  It explains why the project you completed last week does not continue to pop into your mind, but the one you did not complete does.

What To Do About Monkey Brain
If you want to be like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, you don’t have to do anything to keep the screen crawl of ideas coming.  Zeigarnik and Lewin proved uncompleted goals and tasks will pop up uninvited on a regular basis. But if you don’t like the I Got You Babe type of thought interruptions, Roy Baumeister and his colleague, E.J. Masiacampo, have research that may offer a solution.

Baumeister’s and Masiacampo’s research showed that subjects who had a plan suffered less monkey brain than those who did not. Their theory is that uncompleted goals and tasks go into the subconscious. The subconscious cannot plan; only the conscious can plan. So, the subconscious acts like your mother. It picks up the clutter and reminds your conscious to put it somewhere. The subconscious does not need to complete the tasks, but it needs them to be put away in an orderly manner. And when they are, the nagging stops.

There are steps Baumeister and Tierney suggest we take to send monkey brain on a nice holiday trip. Most of these ideas are sourced from efficiency expert David Allen.

Make a Do, Delegate, Drop  or Defer decision for every task that comes across your desk or through your mind. Don’t postpone this decision. I personally favor delegate or drop during the holidays, but make the right decision for you.

Make a plan for the Do decisions. Your subconscious is a nag; it will keep reminding you that it needs a plan until you have it.  If you can complete the task within two minutes, do it now. Otherwise, put the task on your calendar now or in a daily folder for when you need it. Do not leave it unattended on your desk. Every Do must have a place.

For every Do decision, identify a specific next step. Think critically of the exact next step you need to complete the task. Write the specific next step and what you’ll need to do it. For example, if you have to write up next year’s goals before you leave for the holidays, don’t write: Next Year’s Goals on a list.  Break it down to: 1) Seek Input from Manager. Start there. Once completed with that step, ad the next logical one.

Add a Dream folder. Monkey brain also reminds us of our unfulfilled life and career dreams. So, when these pop up thoughts remind you that you want to change careers, move to the beach or learn a new skill, write it down and put it in your dream folder. Occasionally set aside time on your calendar to review your dream folder and identify the next steps for the dreams you wish to pursue.

I’ve been following the advice of Baumeister and Tierney. It makes a positive difference. I get more done with a clearer mind and have less guilt that I “should be” doing the thing that’s popped into my mind.  If you want to give up monkey brain for the holidays, or forever, give it a try.

References:

Baumeister, R.F. and Tierney, J. (2011). Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. New York: Penguin Books.

This blog spends most of its day half done, with frequent breaks; there are half-read books on my shelf and half-written shopping lists on pretty heart-shaped post-it notes in a half-cleared box of sundry stuff waiting to be distributed.

Because activities are often suspended mid-play, usually to do something completely different.

Suspense of an activity is something we all do to a greater or lesser extent; and one psychologist and psychiatrist has come up with concrete research which proves it can be beneficial.

Bluma Zeigarnik graduated from Berlin University in 1927; and went on to study under Kurt Lewin.

He watched waiters as they served in restaurants. It appeared that as long as orders were open and incomplete, they remembered them perfectly.

But the moment the order was closed, they  could not relate the order back with anywhere near the same accuracy.

And so was born the Zeigarnik effect. It works like this: tasks that are unfinished are held in our short-term memory. And that means we deal with them by rehearsing them over and over again. If we don’t, they disappear into a rather cavernous ether.

Her  work seems to suggest that those who suspend a cerebral activity…blogging, for example….and go to do something completely different, will remember what they have been thinking about with much greater success.

So: suspense is good.

Psychologists have thought a lot about suspense; that delaying of the final conclusion to an issue. Storytellers have used it to their advantage for millennia, and film makers since the early days of Hollywood. But some have spotted something strange about how we deal with suspense in a nail-biting thriller.

Because even if we have seen Psycho before, we still jump six feet in the air at the shower scene. Our hearts pump just as fast the second time we watch Glenn Close, inanimate in a bath of water, sit up; or witness the boiling bunny in Fatal Attraction.

We might know the end, but we are still in suspense.

Why?

It’s a puzzlement.

Today I read a story which was as boys own and gung-ho as they come. It was a perfect lesson in suspense: the delay of the conclusion of an incident to create maximum effect.

And it comes courtesy of a creature I have adored for some considerable time.

I first espied a tapir as I strolled around a British zoo. The animals were limited and restless and I felt sad, especially for the dusty elephants in a small enclosure up on the hill of the estate attached to a Jacobean mansion.

As we trotted towards the maze and gardens for a little light relief, we walked past a long bendy-nosed prehistoric creature with such an air of affable gentility, I stopped to gawp.

The little tapir was just nosing round, seeming fairly happy with its lot. It exuded contentment with the universe. It was love at first sight for me.

After a chance sighting in an encyclopedia the other day, I began to research the gentle tapir. Perfectly equipped for its environment, they are the height of a large dog and feed on vegetation, beating tapir-tracks through the forests of South America. They have a flexible nose which can grab some succulent fruit or strip a branch of leaves. They can run fast at the first sign of a predator and submerge themselves in water.

Totally. Adorable.

And then I checked out cultural references and found that this little chap eats dreams, according to Japanese fairy tales. A dream-eater: fodder for the most winsome of posts.

Unless you believe the true-life tale of one of America’s most colourful.

Texan animal hunter and collector Frank Buck had many strings to his bow. In 1911 he had a most advantageous win at poker and travelled for 18 years collecting animals. Eventually, someone suggested he wrote about it: and thus was born ‘Bring ‘Em Back Alive’.

The tales of his adventures, dubious as we might brand them today, were a runaway success. And in among the tales was one about a tapir. The full account is here.  Buck, too, is utterly enchanted by the gentle tapir. And whatever we think of his methods, he can sure write.

He suspends us there, in the little pen where he keeps the placid tapir. We know instinctively that his pen-portrait is far too good to be true. We remain suspended, waiting for what must happen.

When it comes, it is swift and horrific. Buck rubs stinging antiseptic ointment onto wounds on the animal’s back and it turns on him.

He describes his thought processes as he is knocked to the floor and brutalised by the hooves of the creature, unable to get up as, inexplicably, it seems to become heavier. And then, the tapir opens its mouth, just inches from his face, to reveal formidable teeth which could do irreparable damage. he says that the animal had murder in its heart and hate in its eyes.

Even writing about it again, that paradox of suspense makes itself evident and the heart beats faster. Somehow, somewhere in my mind and physiognomy, this is still unfinished business, and will continue to be, with every reading.

This amazing photo is courtesy of scoop102, whose flickr stream you will find here