> CD #87: Closet hook
We’ve lived in this house for nearly ten years, and for nearly ten years, I have meant to install a hook in my closet so I could hang my pyjamas up in the morning instead of leaving them in a pile on the floor. (I suppose another option would be to fold them and place them on a shelf, but that feels wildly unachievable for morning Teresa, who only has enough energy to shuffle around with one eye half-open. Know thyself, they say, and I do.)
Well last week, I finally did it. I bought a sweet little hook and my husband helped me put it up—and now I am thrilled every time I go into the closet.
It feels so good, not only because my pjs are neatly hung, but also because this task has been taking up space in my mind for almost a full decade and now it is gone. I swear my head feels a bit lighter.
My outsized reaction, apparently, could be due in part to the Zeigarnik Effect, which says the brain more readily recalls an unfinished task than a completed one and that the mental tension created by an unfinished task can interfere with your overall productivity. Story of my life, lol.
What’s funny is psychologists have discovered you can mitigate the effect by creating a plan to finish the task—like making a to-do list, for example—and sort of tricking your brain into thinking you’ve dealt with it. From CNN Health:
“Goals are interesting as they are almost these autonomous agents that kind of live inside you and occupy space in your mind,” said E.J. Masicampo, an associate professor of psychology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“When a goal is unfinished it might be a weight on your mind in terms of anxiety or worry and it colors how you see the world, because it’s sort of tugging at the sleeve of your conscious attention,” Masicampo said. “It can be omnipresent whether you’re aware of it or not.”
People with unfinished short-term goals performed poorly on unrelated reading and comprehension tasks, reported a 2011 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Masicampo and research co-author Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at The University of Queensland.
But when the 2011 study participants were allowed to formulate specific plans for their goals before moving onto the next task, those negative effects were eliminated.
“We were able to find that you don’t have to finish the goal to offload it – you really could just make a specific plan for how to attain it to get it to stop occupying that mental space,” Masicampo said.
Interesting, right? I’ve never been much of a list-maker, but I am tempted to try it out and see if I can clear up this busy, messy mind of mine. It’ll be like putting up a bunch of mental hooks, in a way.
:) Teresa
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I can totally relate to this phenomena and the seemingly outsized relief it gives when a small task that’s been nagging at you gets done. I also am a complete believer and devotee of the Getting Things Done methodology, which is all about freeing up mental space by putting these things into a trusted system. That speaks to the relief that knowing you have a plan in place gives, as you mention. Even an incomplete plan will work, as long as you know the immediate Next Action that needs to be done.