Why Do You Sometimes Feel You Haven’t Accomplished Anything?
The biggest surprise for me about the Wordle craze was not the speed with which this word guessing game became a global phenomenon, but rather the speed with which I forgot each day’s word within minutes of correctly guessing it. At first, I thought that my forgetfulness was a symptom of deeper mental problems, but I soon learned that this Wordle-induced word amnesia was common.
What does this have to do with artists?
The same cognitive processes that explain my Wordle amnesia also explain why when I think about the past month or year of my art practice, I sometimes feel like I haven’t accomplished anything – even when I have.
Why Do We Forget Our Accomplishments?
A quirk of human cognition is that we are much better at remembering the things we haven’t finished and the problems we haven’t solved than we are at remembering what we have done.
This phenomenon of forgetting about information once a task is finished even has its own name – the Zeigarnik Effect, named after the Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.
The story goes that Zeigarnik was at a Berlin restaurant with colleagues one evening in 1927. When the group asked the waiter for the bill, the waiter was able to recall exactly what everyone had ordered even though he had not written it down. When he was asked to rewrite the bill a short time later, however, the waiter could no longer remember what anyone had ordered.
Why was that all that detailed information so quickly forgotten once the bill had been paid? Was this forgetfulness unique to that particular waiter or was it indicative of a more widespread phenomenon?
Zeigarnik took these questions about memory back to the lab where she performed a series of experiments using a wide range of tasks. As a whole, her studies showed that unfinished tasks were remembered approximately twice as well as completed tasks. Subsequent studies have shown that although there are many other factors that affect task recall, we do tend to remember incomplete tasks and problems better than completed ones.
The Perks and Problems of Having a Brain That Favors the Unfinished
Our cognitive bias toward the unfinished was an excellent evolutionary strategy for keeping our limited brains focused on what matters. Letting go of the done and dusted allows more mental space for what’s important in the here and now. Frequent recall of the things that still need doing reminds us to do them. And having unsolved problems buzzing around our brains and vying for our attention gives us additional opportunities to solve them.
This strategy worked well in the bygone era when our to-do list was essential for our survival and when we did not face end of year evaluations. Unfortunately, in our modern world our tendency to forget what we’ve done and to keep thinking about all those things that still need doing can backfire. We might have had a productive day, but if all we remember at day’s end are the many things still on our to-do list, we can be left feeling both unproductive and overwhelmed.
Is it possible to overcome the Zeigarnik Effect in order to boost your sense of accomplishment and quiet the mental noise of unfinished tasks? You can’t change thousands of years of cognitive evolution, but there are two simple things that you can do:
1. Keep track of wins, both big and small
2. Store your to-do list out of your head
Track What You’ve Done – Your Brain Won’t Do It For You
Last year, I did not do a good job of tracking how I was spending my time and what I was accomplishing in my art practice. As a consequence, I was plagued throughout the year by the sense that I was somehow spending my time with nothing to show for it. When I combed through my calendar at the end of the year, however, I realized that I had actually done much more than I thought. I had simply forgotten the time I’d spent on building an art community, experimenting in the studio, and writing blog posts.
I was glad for the boost that the reflection process gave me, but how much nicer it would have been if I’d had that sense of accomplishment and progress throughout the year!
This year, I am doing a much better job of tracking. I note the tasks I’ve finished in my calendar – even if they are small or are parts of a bigger project. And I schedule time to reflect at the end of each month and quarter, noting what I’ve done and what I can celebrate.
I’ve heard many people refer to this as creating a ta-da list – as opposed to a to-do list.
Many times, I find I’ve been more productive than I thought. Some months I haven’t done as much as I would have liked but I can still identify and celebrate the kind of small wins that are often pushed under our cognitive carpets. And some months I truly haven’t done much but at least the reflection process can help me focus on what I can do going forward.
Tracking what I’ve done not only gives me a sense of accomplishment, it also motivates me to keep going with my art practice.
Reclaim Mental Space By Storing Tasks and Problems Off Site
One of my best friends was notorious at university for her sudden gasping moments of apparent panic. “What is it?!” we’d ask, “Are you okay? What’s wrong!?” “Oh nothing,” she’d say, “I just remembered that I have to return my library book.” Library books, assignments to turn in, phone calls to make – whatever the unfinished task was, her brain had a particularly forceful way of pushing it into her consciousness.
Constantly pulling information back into awareness is one way that the brain keeps things alive in short-term memory. But there is a cognitive cost to this biological version of a push notification.
Keeping unfinished tasks cognitively active and periodically popping them into conscious thought takes mental energy and space, leaving us with less bandwidth for other things. And the continual reminder of tasks undone and problems unsolved can also stress us out, disrupt our sleep, and make it difficult to relax and unwind.
One of the best strategies for quieting the buzzing in our brains is simple cognitive housekeeping. Instead of storing your to-dos in your brain, store them somewhere else and ideally schedule a time to do them. That “somewhere else” will depend on personal needs and preferences – old-fashioned pen and paper, simple to-do apps, and complex project management software all have their fans.
Similarly, you can download unsolved problems from your cognitive space, or at least put them to rest for a while, in a journal or morning pages. You could even make a conscious decision to not do something – and voilà, once that decision is made your brain can stop reminding you to do it.
When the brain has a sense that open tasks are safely stored for later attention, it is free to spend the here-and-now attention on whatever it is you’re trying to do. Quieting cognitive noise can also make it easier to switch off and unwind at the end of the day or week. It’s the cognitive equivalent of scheduling exercise and storing your equipment neatly out of the way rather than leaving your free weights strewn around the living room as a constant and annoying reminder to exercise.
A Counteroffensive Against the Zeigarnik Effect
The Zeigarnik Effect can be a double whammy in an achievement-driven world full of things to do. Not only do our brains tend to dismiss our accomplishments, but they stress us out with continual reminders of everything we haven’t done.
But this year I’m running a successful counteroffensive. Scheduled reflection time and storing my to-dos outside my head have become my not-so-secret weapons against the Zeigarnik effect.
How do you remember what you’ve done?
How do you keep track of unfinished tasks without wasting precious cognitive resources?
But Wait, There’s More
There are definite benefits of quieting the mental noise of unfinished tasks. But as I noted at the beginning of this post, there are good reasons that unfinished tasks tend to get cognitive attention.
In my next two posts I’ll discuss how you can leverage the cognitive noise associated with unfinished tasks in order to solve problems and jumpstart your day.
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