Unfinished business. How to deal with unfinished tasks and free up time for new things

Vladimir Kusakin - How to become more productive by managing your time

I’m tempted to add the common phrase: “Time is money!”
Very often these two things are the main barriers to achieving your goals. Interestingly, if you learn to manage time, your ability to have more money will immediately increase. In general, money is a terribly interesting topic, which we will consider in one of the following letters.

Have you ever seen a dog chasing a car and barking terribly with abandon? What will she do if she catches up?
Sometimes I also chased something in my life, like that dog. But until I had a worthy goal, I had time and money barriers.

Today I want to offer you one of the best articles on this topic by Klaus Hilgers. I myself have repeatedly resorted to the advice described in this article, and my life has changed dramatically.

Time management or HOW TO MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER

Klaus Hilgers has over twenty years of experience as a management consultant. He is the president of his consulting company, Epoch Consultants, which is based in the United States. Mr. Hilgers uses effective time management programs to help managers cope with work overload and better manage their time and stress levels.

Unfinished business...
dangerous to your health!

In the hustle and bustle of everyday work, being under the pressure of urgent matters, we get used to unconsciously shifting responsibility for our lives to various circumstances - economic, personal, any other, but this approach leaves us absolutely no time for creativity.

Successfully managing all aspects of life: family, career, finances, leisure, physical and spiritual aspects is the key to a successful, productive life.

If you want to cope with the stress caused by many problems that require immediate solutions, then the first thing you need to do is look at what kind of lifestyle you are leading or what kind of lifestyle you have been “led” to. Many of us, instead of managing our own lives, entrust this management to circumstances.

To understand how you can unlock your natural ability to manage your life, you need to define your purpose: “Why am I doing all this?”, “What is the purpose of my company?”, “What is the purpose of my position?”, “What is the purpose of my relationship with ______(Name)?". Your goal could be: “to put children on their feet,” or “to be a successful artist, musician, engineer, salesman, etc.”

Answer these quiz questions to analyze your lifestyle:

1. Are your pockets stuffed with pieces of paper on which you write down what needs to be done?
2. Do you find it difficult to concentrate on getting work done because you are thinking about other things that need to be done?
3. Do you often fall behind schedule and try to catch up?
4. Have you started many new projects but are not finishing them?
5. When you do something, do you constantly get distracted, and does this affect the speed of your work?
6. Do you often remember that you didn't do something important until it's too late?
7. Do you come home feeling like you didn't get anything done at work, you feel very tired and the only thing you can do is watch TV?
8. Do you feel like you can't make time for exercise, relaxation, or even simple fun?

If you answered “YES” to at least one question, it means that you are not managing your life very well. The question is… “Who controls your life?” Do you manage your time, or do circumstances dictate your daily routine?

Right now you might be thinking, “I don’t have time to plan. I'm so busy coping and managing various situations in my life that I just don't have time to plan. I haven’t even written down goals for this year, and it’s already March. I know I need to write them, but I don't think it will ever happen."

Why does this situation arise? A serious problem that prevents you from finishing things is not finishing what you started. Many people, instead of completing things, tend to accumulate unfinished cycles, known as “loops and loose ends.” And this creates stress.

Completing a task is essentially different from simply stopping working on it. When something is “complete,” it exists “in its entirety,” “there are no missing parts,” and it is “complete and complete,” Webster’s New World Dictionary.

When a task is completed, you can “put it out of your mind”—you no longer keep it in your mind. You feel satisfied. You're ready to move on to the next thing, you're ready to create. You feel good!

Many of us surround ourselves with “unfinished business” instead of “finished work.” “I don’t care if there’s a mistake, I won’t redo it,” or “I’ll send this work somewhere else... who cares.” In fact, there is nothing surprising in such emotions: finishing the work started is the most difficult thing. The last percent of the work is usually more difficult to complete than the previous ninety-nine. We resist finishing things and allow them to remain unfinished. Unfulfilled tasks become our old friends... good old... “deadly” friends.

Now you may be thinking: “But I don’t have time to complete things completely!” Okay, let's look at some of the consequences of unfinished work.

UNFINISHED WORK DEALS A FATAL Blow to:

• Your time
• Your attention
• Your energy
• to your health

See what happens if you only complete ninety percent of the work, or simply leave something undone, or do work just to get rid of it:

1. The next morning the work appears on your desk again for corrections or additions, so you actually have to do it twice.
2. The number of defects in production is increasing.
3. Even if you have nothing to complain about, you yourself do not feel satisfied with this work.
4. Because your memory is cluttered with so many unfinished tasks that you need to remember, you cannot concentrate on the work at hand.
5. You lack energy.
6. You find it difficult to concentrate.
7. You feel like you're wasting a lot of time.
8. You feel tired and irritable.
9. You perceive any situation as a source of additional stress.
10. It becomes increasingly difficult for you to manage because you are in a constant state of stress (this is accompanied by various physical manifestations: poor digestion, headaches, nervousness, etc.).

Unfinished business includes:

• Unfinished work.
• Written and oral communication not handled properly.

Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? Can you really afford not to complete things, provided that when you complete the work you get:

1. Satisfaction.
2. More energy.
3. Increasing the speed of work (The more you do, the more you can do! Everything speeds up!).
4. The ability to create, to start new things.

Completion is always the beginning of something new. Closure releases energy and focus, which significantly changes the way you perceive yourself and your life.

“How can I start?”, you will be surprised, “I’m mired in problems!”, “I can’t do everything at once!”

This is true, but you don't have to do everything at once. There are several principles of time management.

In his article “How to Get Better at Work,” L. Ron Hubbard gave this advice:
“Do it IMMEDIATELY.
One of the best ways to cut your work in half is to not do it twice."
Have you ever picked up a document, looked at it, put it aside, and then returned to it again later? This is double work.

Make a list of unfinished tasks, set completion dates and complete them.

Organize your work: Designate a place for your things and always put them back where they belong.

Use a document filing system so that you can easily find what you need.

Use electronic calendars and track the completion of tasks using them.

Then formulate goals for yourself in various areas and plan steps to achieve these goals. Formulate goals regarding:

1. Finance
2. Careers
3. Health
4. Improved physical condition
5. Nutrition improvements
6. Managing under stress
7. Relationships with other people

When you make weekly and daily plans according to your priority goals, when you achieve these goals, you will feel satisfied; it will be your reward and your motivation to complete the next tasks. Set goals for yourself - for the year, for the month, for the week, for the day, as well as any long-term goals. Prioritize them, plan the steps that will lead to achieving those goals and then complete each step. When making your plan, be sure to allow time to deal with unforeseen circumstances.

The next step to better managing your time (it's the biggest and most important) is to do everything you do carefully and to completion until you are completely satisfied with what you've done.
Use a personal time management system, which may be on your computer. The system should include sections for planning goals, for creating a weekly and daily plan, monthly to-do calendars, a finance section, a section for notes, projects, addresses, etc.

To help you better manage your time, I want to restate everything I said above in the form of the following recommendations:

1. Formulate your goals and prioritize them.
2. Make a weekly plan regularly.
3. Complete tasks according to priorities.
4. Ask yourself, “How can I make the best use of my time right now?” and do just that.
5. "If you don't need something, get rid of it." Research shows that eighty percent of papers placed in folders are never looked at again. Therefore, if you throw them away, nothing bad will happen.
6. Write down what you need to do, don't keep it all in your head. You will feel better.
7. It is completely normal for you to ask those you communicate with to email you requests or tasks. This way you won't forget to complete them.
8. Organize a good information storage system.
9. Do the job completely.
10. Do the work “now.”

Start managing your life using the principles we've discussed in this article, and you'll see your life become more productive, more streamlined, and much more enjoyable. Get started now!

PHOTO Getty Images

This phenomenon, widely known in psychology, was discovered in the 1920s by our compatriot Bluma Zeigarnik 1 . At that time, she was interning in Berlin with the famous psychologist Kurt Lewin. Once in a cafe, Levin drew her attention to a strange pattern. The waiter perfectly remembered all the details of the order, without even resorting to notes. But having completed it, I could no longer remember what exactly the previous visitors had ordered. This observation gave rise to a serious experiment, during which Zeigarnik established (and described in her thesis) an important feature of our memory: we remember unfinished actions much better (about twice as much) than those that were completed.
If a task was set and not completed, our brain continues to remind us of this, and we involuntarily return to it with our thoughts again and again. This effect manifests itself in our lives at every step.

Stress, multitasking and the Zeigarnik effect

Much has been written about how multitasking prevents the brain from working productively and causes stress. This is directly related to the Zeigarnik effect. The plan of various tasks that you keep in your mind is, in essence, a list of unfinished tasks that your brain cannot turn off and constantly reminds you of them. As a result, you cannot concentrate on the task you are currently busy with. The best way to cope with this kind of stress is to “materialize” your mental plan by “uploading” it onto paper, a computer or phone. In this way, you kind of “convince” your brain that these tasks will be completed a little earlier or a little later, and it stops bombarding you with reminders about them.

We are driven by the expectation of reward

The Zeigarnik effect occurs when the brain reminds us of an unfinished task. But he does not help us in any way to begin to implement it. Thinking about a task and rolling up your sleeves to act are two different things, although the former precedes the latter. And here, first of all, another factor affects us - the expectation of reward.
Suppose you have two tasks: read a textbook and watch a movie on the Internet. Periodically, your brain reminds you of these undone things. But which one you complete depends on what reward you expect from them and which one you prefer.
For most of us, it is preferable, that is, more enjoyable, to watch a movie than to sit through a textbook. And most likely, we will postpone the second task under various pretexts.
If the task before us is quite complex and we fall into procrastination, not knowing which end to approach it from, the best way is to start at least somewhere. Preferably - from the easiest one. The job has been started, which means it will be finished.

Haunting melodies and enticing series

Another manifestation of the Zeigarnik effect is the melody that sounds in our heads, which is impossible to get rid of. Let's say we heard a certain song. But we couldn’t remember it in its entirety; only a small fragment endlessly scrolls through our memory.
Why does this “stuck” happen? To our brains, a song that we haven't fully memorized is an incomplete action. He repeats a fragment he knows in an attempt to “complete” the song as a whole. But this is impossible, since it is not stored in memory.
If we listen to the song again and again and finally remember it all, the brain will consider the task completed and will relieve us of the obsession.
By the way, the Zeigarnik effect can also explain the addiction to TV series that millions of people fall into. At the end of each episode, the screenwriter writes a so-called “hook”: this is some intriguing situation (mystery, threat, obstacle, etc.), the outcome of which can only be learned from the next episode. The hero falls from a cliff... the heroine faints after receiving some kind of letter... the helicopter on which the heroes are flying begins to fall... And even if the series does not really captivate the viewer, something pushes him to find out the continuation - in other words, he ends up on this "hook". We need the action to end!

Here again, running past, I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the unfinished painting. It flashed in my head: where can I get this inspiration again? Why did the feeling of ease from the process disappear? The further you go, the more difficult it is to pull yourself together and finally finish what you once started with such fervor.

The effect of unfinished business. Which of us hasn't had this happen? For some reason, we give up on things halfway: either we didn’t have time to finish it in a day, or attempts to solve a problem get stuck, like in a quagmire, and you can’t see the result, or routine turned out to be stronger than inspiration.

And we’re not just talking about any tasks here. Relationships - personal and work - can also remain incomplete. Here everything becomes even more complicated, because dependence, attachment, fear of loneliness and other human illusions are added.

Why don't we get things done?

If you didn’t complete it, it means you didn’t put a full stop somewhere. And this “incomplete” goes with you further in life from the past to the future. It's like you inhaled, but you can't exhale. The more such unfinished moments in our lives, the more we begin to suffocate under their weight, lose strength and energy, inspiration and desire.

And don’t deceive yourself: you won’t be able to forget, get them out of your head. You will constantly stumble upon them, remember and blame yourself.

Why do we leave things unfinished? There are several reasons for this:

1. We cannot correctly estimate the time it will take to complete this task. It seems that you will decide quickly, literally in one day. But the day ends, and the cart is still there. But tomorrow is a new day, new tasks.
2. We don't know how to prioritize. We take on what we don’t really need, but really want. Then we quit because something more important and urgent requires attention.
3. We are distracted from the work we have started to spend time uselessly. So I decided to read the news, then I got hooked on the article and looked through social networks. And the TV is broadcasting something in the background.
4. We sabotage. From laziness or due to negative emotions. It seems like you are doing it, but there is no result, or the goal is too far away and seems unattainable. Perhaps someone close to you said that “you are doing nonsense, it would be better if you did something useful.”

How to manage everything and not accumulate new tasks?

The main idea is to learn to make a point. Every unfinished task is a weight on your feet, pulling you back. Each completed one is wings for forward flight.

1. Conduct an audit of all unfinished matters

The first task is to look around. What didn't you finish? They didn’t finish drawing, didn’t finish writing, didn’t finish sewing, didn’t wash, etc.

If unfinished tasks are very old, they may have already lost their relevance. Look - do you still need them? Is it worth spending your time on them?

Finish those things that are no longer relevant for yourself in your head. Make a point. You don’t return to them anymore and don’t regret that you never finished them. Get them out of your head and, if possible, put everything that reminds you of them out of sight.

Recently I also carried out such an audit. How do I usually make a point? First, I check the relevance of the unfinished item, then whether I am emotionally connected to it.

Here is one of the paintings abandoned halfway. All. The idea is gone, I'm no longer interested in it. Is there a new idea based on what has already been written? No. And there is no desire to force her out of herself. It's decided - I'll use it as a canvas for another painting. Dot.

A new course has been hanging over my soul for a long time, which I am trying to complete. While I am writing, the situation in the laws is rapidly changing: new information, new data. And I’m constantly bogged down, the work is progressing with difficulty. Today, in this form, the course is no longer relevant. Moreover, if my own eyes don’t light up from it, how will I give it to people? It's decided - I won't torture myself anymore. Materials are in the archive. Dot.

Oh, and here is a pile of laundry that needs ironing for the second week. Relevant? Very much. I want to? Honestly, no. But you have to do it - you can’t throw your laundry in the trash. It’s decided - we’ll send it to the list for completion.

In relationships we follow the same pattern. True, it is much more difficult to cope with an emotional attachment to a person. Is the relationship relevant? No. You may even have already broken up. But still you cling? To put an end to it, you need to understand yourself and understand that this is not “high love”, but a painful addiction. Although this is a deep topic for a separate discussion.

2. Find objections to excuses

First, for each task, give yourself an honest answer as to why you didn’t finish it earlier, what got in the way. Even if you already have the “no time” excuse, try to dig further.

Then find for each “why?” your objection. Often excuses lie on the surface, while the true reason for “doing / not doing” is much deeper.

For example, the same notorious ironing. “Why?”: “There is absolutely no time to do this.” Objection: “How much do you need for this? Maximum one hour. You were on the Internet for this hour yesterday. Excuse. You just don’t like to stroke, so you put off this moment. Change your habit - do it right away.”

You won't be able to understand the reasons for self-sabotage until you deal with your emotions. Especially when it comes to creative works that have been shelved. I know from myself how often dozens of kind words from people who say “you are talented” are killed by a single caustic “you are mediocrity.”

3. Write everything down on paper

It is better to write down your thoughts during the revision process, because we believe what is written much more than what is said. I give myself a list of things that need to be completed in order of priority and just do one after the other. With every box you tick on the list, it literally becomes physically easier!

For self-control and to keep myself from new abandoned tasks, I keep a diary every day. In the morning (or before going to bed) I write down my upcoming plans for one day. I prioritize them in advance and try to correctly estimate the time to complete all tasks. And in the evening I write down my observations based on the results of the day. What you did, what you didn’t do. Why I didn’t do it: I was distracted, I didn’t calculate the time, there were a lot of calls, it just didn’t work out today, etc. Three or four sentences are enough.

4. Start with the unfinished

I start the next day with unfinished tasks. Of course, if this is a hobby and not a work issue, then I’ll put this item on the next free time. And I won’t take up any other activity until I finish what I started.

You can learn to finish big things by starting with small steps. Practice on common everyday tasks - things that form your daily habits.

I even took it upon myself to change some of my routines to avoid accumulating “work in progress.” For example, clean the kitchen immediately after cooking and eating. Iron the laundry as soon as it is dry. Don't take on a bunch of things at once. I did one thing - then I do another.

This is how we gradually get rid of the old and no longer needed. After all, in order to find something new, you need to make room and time for it.

From the editor

Self-sabotage is still a problem! It would seem that you set yourself a task, realize its necessity, but cannot complete it - obstacles appear every now and then. What to do if you need to, but don’t want to, can be found in this article by a psychologist. Olga Yurkovskaya: .

To clear space for positive changes in your life, it is not enough. Postponed and unfulfilled tasks are mental ballast that weighs us down and prevents us from moving forward. Therefore, the next step was to get rid of the unfinished tasks, unresolved situations and unfulfilled plans that had accumulated over time.

In psychology there is such a concept - . It could be something an action not completed, an unfulfilled need, or an unfinished situation. It would seem that everything is already in the past, but our subconscious retains these tasks in memory and will distract ours with them until the situation is brought to its logical conclusion. We unconsciously play out in our new relationships those scenes that we did not complete in the previous ones, we continue to be corroded by those emotions that we wanted, but, and we are depressed by the realization that we planned something, but never started doing it. Stress, feelings of guilt towards ourselves and other people, the idea that I am an unnecessary and weak-willed person - not only take away our strength, but also lay in us a program of self-doubt, lowering our self-esteem for no particular reason.

I learned an interesting fact that our compatriot Bluma Zeigarnik, while studying personality psychology at the beginning of the last century, conducted an experiment that showed that we retain unfinished actions in memory much longer than completed ones. This effect was named after her, the Zeigarnik effect, and continues to influence us to this day. We can quickly forget even our significant success, which we have been striving for for a long time, but we will return for a long time and painfully in our memories and replay in our heads the situation when we did not behave as we could, showed ourselves not at full strength, or did not do what we wanted. what they wanted. Ah, I had to say this, act like this, do that. We immediately forget about buying our favorite dress, but for a long time we will remember the dress that we wanted, but for some reason did not buy.

We all have these unfinished gestalts. For now, I don’t plan to dig deep and look for solutions to psychological problems, but I would really like to get rid of the burden of ordinary unfinished and postponed tasks. This is exactly the task I decided to set for myself today, and to deal with it in the coming weeks.

Apparently it was not by chance that the article “” appeared. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend reading it. It is procrastination - our tendency to put things off until later, distracted by something insignificant and unimportant - that is the reason that we accumulate an impressive to-do list that weighs us down. Creating a new habit and stopping procrastination is wonderful. But it is also necessary to solve the problem with those tasks that have already arisen. What needs to be done for this?

How to deal with unfinished business.

1. Make a list of ALL your pending tasks.

Try to remember everything you planned to do - all the big projects and small tasks, all the calls, meetings, things to do. Everything that bothered you and didn’t get around to.

Opposite each of the actions, write the action that will be first step in completing the task. For example, if you were planning to redecorate a room, the first step might be to draw a design or choose wallpaper. Even if this step is very small, it will get things moving. By doing this, you will kill 2 birds with one stone: firstly, you will win, which was caused by fear of a large and complex task, and, secondly, you will increase your chances of completing the task. Studies have shown that we complete those tasks that we write down on paper much more often than those that we keep in our heads.

2. Write 5 things from the list into the planner, distributing them by day of the week, and immediately start doing it.

As soon as you complete something, immediately plan the next one. Be sure to cross off what you have done from the list - this will give you confidence and motivate you for further action. For me this is the most pleasant moment. The knowledge that I have finally completed some task that previously seemed impossible to me makes me happy and energizes me.

By the way, if you notice that some task has been “hanging” on your to-do list for a long time, ask yourself the question - is it really worth doing? Maybe you don't do it because it doesn't really matter? In this case, you just have to admit that it has lost its relevance and make a conscious decision, what do you . This is also one of the ways to complete the gestalt.

Of course, solving everyday problems is like running in circles - we complete one thing, but something else inevitably arises. This is understandable, and you need to take it calmly. Just remember that our task is to get rid of those “tails of the past” that take away our energy, to put an end to solving old problems. Clear your inner space, calm your guilt in order to move forward.

As for my list of tasks - it took up 2 sheets, and I have already started crossing off the first things. And what discoveries await me ahead - I will tell you in the following articles, so as not to miss them.©

People react painfully to unfinished business.

Suppose you are expecting guests in the evening. You cleaned the house, prepared dinner, figured out how you would entertain everyone. Everything is ready, and there is still a whole hour before the guests arrive. It would seem that this is a great time to relax or solve another problem. But... for some reason, most of us can’t get distracted.

This hour has already been reserved by consciousness. And instead of relaxing, we are intensely busy waiting for guests. Some people in such a situation cannot even read a book and constantly look at the clock.

One small meeting scheduled for the middle of the day can easily ruin some people's entire day. After all, neither before nor after it are they able to do anything seriously. Before the meeting, the fact of an approaching event gets on your nerves, and after that it seems like it’s too late to do anything useful because more time is required. As a result, the day was lost, although there is no logical explanation for this.

If you rarely go on vacation or business trips, then you probably start preparing a few days in advance, postponing all other things until you return. After all, you are already “busy”, almost left.

The stakes increase when it comes to studying for exams, waiting to present to investors, or interviewing for a new job.

How common is this?

Interestingly, humans are not the only creature that gets stuck when faced with unfinished business. Animals have what is called biased activity. Researchers have found that if an animal cannot complete a task it has started, it switches to meaningless replacement actions.

For example, two wild dogs collided on the border of their territories. They don't know what to do - attack or run. In this case, the wild dogs begin to circle in place, wash themselves, dig holes and perform other illogical actions.

What about people?

In a person, a conflict between several important tasks or fear of making a decision causes a desire to put things off until later, and devote the current time to reading social networks, cooking cupcakes or training with heavy weights.

When you schedule a meeting, you mark it in your head as a task that needs completion. You kind of start it, and not being able to finish it immediately causes anxiety. You don't actually do anything, but waiting seriously exhausts your nervous system. Tension is especially strong when completing a task is extended over time. For example, you are treating your teeth, scheduling a series of visits to the dentist, or working on tasks where their completion depends not only on you, but also on others (many people can wait half a day for an answer, unable to do other things during this time).

There are people who make large lists of tasks, hoping that this will discipline them, but in fact the anxiety of not completing each task accumulates until the anxiety turns the person into a neurotic.

All these amazing reactions arise due to the way a person perceives unfinished business.

What scientists say

Our compatriot Maria Rikers-Ovsyankina (1898-1993, student of Kurt Lewin) conducted a simple experiment: she gave adults a boring and useless task - to put together a figurine from cut pieces. When the subject completed about half of the task, she interrupted him and asked him to do a second task, unrelated to the previous one. At the same time, she covered the not fully assembled figure with a newspaper. It turned out that after finishing the second task, 86% of the subjects expressed a desire to return to the first task and complete it, and the inability to do this increased the speed of people’s heartbeats and had other psychophysiological effects.

“Why do adults, having started such stupid work, want to return to it? After all, there is no interest or encouragement!”– the psychologists were amazed. As a result, it was concluded that people have a need to complete any task, even a meaningless one.

In addition, Bluma Zeigarnik discovered what is now called the “Zeigarnik effect.” Her experiments showed that people remember unfinished tasks much better than completed ones. Not only do we suffer from unfinished tasks, but we are also unable to get them out of our heads. This also explains, for example, why people finish reading bad books, although it does not give them any pleasure.

Okay, but how is this treated?

Worries from unfinished tasks can be avoided if you engage in other, but similar activities. “Surrogate execution” gives an excellent effect when you delegate a task to someone else (and tick “done” in your head), or even imitate doing something. For example, you made a note to buy something, but instead of the purchase itself, you go to the store, put a tick on the list and so calm your nerves. The best part is that watching someone working on or completing a similar task also creates a feeling of relaxation.

Try to understand that living among many unfinished things is normal. Moreover, some things need to be left unfinished because they are no longer relevant. If your project doesn't live up to expectations, you don't have to torture yourself to finish it.

Further. If you have started something that takes a long time - learning a new language, mastering a new profession, implementing a serious project - you will have to live for a long time under the huge shadow of incompleteness. To prevent this shadow from killing your motivation, divide a major task into intermediate stages, and enjoy achieving each of them.

Many complex tasks can be completed in 20-30 minute chunks, and you don't have to wait until you have a long time slot. Having a couple of hours without being disturbed is a luxury. And if you do something for half an hour a day, by the end of the week you will feel real progress.