Round 3: Complete Small Tasks
There are many ways to wellbeing. And completing small tasks is one of them.
Let me show you why.
For a long time I have tried to take this idea fairly seriously. That is, doing small things.
First introduced to me by an excellent psychologist, clinician, and sometimes controversial communicator, Dr Peterson, I have since heard the idea expressed by many thinkers in many different contexts.
Taking the small things seriously is a good idea, especially for good mental health, but also for being productive.
As ever, this post explores and explains the idea.
Zeigarnik and her effect
Once upon a time a Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Zeigarnik (pronounced Tzai-gar-nick) ordered a meal in Austria, at a Viennese restaurant. That was nearly 100 years ago. There, what she discovered was interesting, and relevant to this very day.
The essence of her subsequent experiments and research efforts were this: people remember unfinished tasks much easier than they remember completed tasks. In this restaurant, for example, Zeigarnik observed that the wait staff tended to remember orders that were still live and unfinished much better as compared to orders that were competed and finito.
Zeigarnik’s effect suggests that uncompleted tasks take up cognitive space in our brains. Moreover, it suggests that uncompleted tasks can quietly stress us out. Perhaps the fact that these tasks are unfinished leads our brains to divert more neural resources towards remembering them, creating a kind of cognitive tension. Translated to life beyond the restaurant, it suggests that the more that small and unfinished tasks build up, the harder it becomes to focus on tasks that are truly important (and usually more complex), since our brains must use precious energy stressing about that which is incomplete. Unfinished small tasks may on the surface seem trivial. But to a brain with limited resources they are a costly cognitive distraction.
Don’t do your laundry for a week and it’s not a big deal. But leave it months and the task’s difficulty increases, as does the mental resistance you’ll experience before starting it, as does the complexity to solve this once simple problem. Many things are like this - physical and mental health are prime examples. Issues tend to start small (though not always). And if small issues are neglected or ignored or repressed, they grow, morph, and ultimately become harder, more expensive, and trickier to sort out. For someone who struggles with mental health in some way, it’s easy to see how uncompleted tasks do more than merely quietly stress out a brain, but they may in fact take on a new significance, importance, and pernicious edge.
The small, the tiny, the atomic, and the bedroom
Avoiding the downside of uncompleted tasks and aiming his ideas specifically for the person struggling, Peterson suggested that a good place to start building sound mental health was from the bottom-up. And to engage in this process slowly. At the pace of one small step at a time. To be clear, he suggested that a person should think about what small, easy, and thus achievable tasks are available for completion. What, in other words, can I do now to impose order on a chaotic world, a chaotic mind? For Peterson it starts with something as simple as tidying up one’s bedroom.
Although directly and narrowly prescriptive, that idea is mere metaphor; because it might also include doing the dishes or completing small tasks like filing away paperwork that need to be done, but has been neglected. There is much wisdom in such an approach, especially for someone struggling. The easier the task, the easier it is to achieve. And once completed, not only does it feel good, but it also removes cognitive tension, freeing up brain space for the next, perhaps more challenging, pursuit. It also prevents the growth problem. Because once the task is done, it cannot morph into a monster.
Another reason why this approach is clever is because of a quirk of motivation. Many people may think that a rough formula for motivation is this:
I set a goal and feel motivated, then I take action
But a far more accurate model is this:
I take action first, and this helps me to accurately identify my goal and gives me motivation to pursue them
I admit that something so complex as motivation is truly not this simple. But boiling it down to the second sentence generally makes good psychological sense. Why? Doing things makes us feel good. Action so often leads to sustained motivation to continue getting things done. Thus, it is by getting started at something that gives us motivation, not thinking about it. The idea is to start small, and then to watch the effect grow and spill out into larger, and more complex goals. Another process is at play.
The more we do and the more we achieve, the better informed we become at what we want to achieve, and the more precise our goals become. Our motivations and our gaols, in other words, iterate forwards, updating with each successful step forward. Because successful task completion can lead to motivation and more precise goal setting, doing this also creates a situation where we may be better able to keep working away at such goals, whatever they are. To repeat: motivation does not come from sitting around and thinking about something; it comes from doing something. It’s also worth knowing that we mostly experience positive emotion while in pursuit of our goals, not after we've achieved them. Dopamine, the molecule of motivation, rises while we pursue something, and tends to crash after we achieve something. According to Haidt, Shakespeare was right: the joy really is in the doing, that sort of thing.
Together, that is very valuable knowledge about motivation. It suggests that taking small, positive, and forward action not only informs our accurate and realistic goals, but also helps to get the motivation going to start working away at both smaller and larger goals. In that sense, small tasks like tidying up a bedroom or doing the washing up are not mundane. Instead, they are deeply important to keep people not only physically moving, but also to feel psychologically freer, more rewarded, and more motivated.
Creatures of very small habits
Another author, James Clear, has written an excellent book around this theme, Atomic Habits. In this work, Clear takes the reader on a detour through how it is the small actions - what he calls the atomic - that make us who we are. Specifically, the premise is that by getting 1% better at something each day is a sensible way forward. With time not only is this sustainable and realistic (rather than idealistic and likely to fail), but it compounds. If we set ourselves big life goals, that’s very nice, but it’s also demotivating when we fail to achieve our big life goals. And we will fail to achieve them - unless our atomic and daily habits directly contribute towards what our big goals are. In other words, what we do each day, the tiny steps we take forward, are intimately related to our overarching and long-term goals. That is not surprising and is essentially a tautology, but it is nevertheless an idea worth thinking about. We must learn to walk before we run; and learning to run directly means struggling forward in small steps that resemble walking.
Completing small tasks like keeping a bedroom tidy or doing the washing up thus take on a new importance. Getting them consistently done helps keep our brains freer and less tense, but such tasks also have the ability to serve as our atomic foundations for good mental health, and productive work. Completing a task feels good. And by doing something small, we feel rewarded, and are more likely to move onto something bigger. It is easy to see how the benefits compound when we realistically add in other things that are good for us, like: reading for 30 minutes each day, learning new technical skills, saving money, engaging in analytical or emotional journaling, taking cold showers, getting regular exercise, eating well, or pursuing a creative goal.
We are indeed curious creatures. Creatures who by our very natures likely must be involved in positive action forward of some kind to have sound mental health. Keeping things small and regular helps to make such things happen. And it is this process - of making things happen - that brings much benefit to the human animal.
References
Zeigarnick’s effect is discussed in Jim Kwik’s Limitless, a book about how to get the most out of your brain
Peterson’s small tasks idea can be found both in his book 12 Rules for Life but also on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8_gUmt0k8o&ab_channel=JREClips
Action leads to motivation, an idea discussed in Clear’s Atomic Habits
In a classically passionate tone, Peterson discusses how goals iterate - that is, updating by taking action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iao6GF3yAR4&ab_channel=JustinHager
Relationship between goals and positive emotion is an established psychological fact, discussed by Peterson here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OscD3RYo6o&ab_channel=WisdomFlow
Haidt discusses these themes in a great book, The Happiness Hypothesis (2006)
