<transcript of educational moment at Winchester #1 BNI, march 2013>

Bluma Zeigarnik was a woman from Poland who lived in Vienna in the 1920’s. She observed how waiters seemed to remember the orders of the people they served, even if interrupted, but at the moment the order was completed, they seemed to forget. When tested in laboratories, it turns out that the chance someone forgets a task they are working on is 50% bigger when this task is just cimpleted.

This particular effect, now known as the Zeigarnik effect, has been documented over and over. It states that if you start something, your mind somehow cannot let go until it is finished. One example of its use is in the so called ‘cliff-hanger’. You now feel the need to watch the next episode of whatever you were watching if this episode ended with a cliff-hanger.

The reason why I mention the Zeigarnik effect, is that it can be an effective tool in fighting  procrastination: when faced with a bigger project, we often have the tendency to postpone working on it as we somehow sense that the work might be quite significant. The trick is to start with something: choose a simple task to start working on, and now the Zeigarnik effect kicks in: you have to keep working on the project.

I use it often in coaching sessions with clients that somehow dread to start on something. “Time to eat the Elephant, let’s break it down to some simple tasks that you should have completed next time that you see me” I will say. That is the trick to enlist the help of the Zeigarnik effect: Start Starting.