Thursday, July 14, 2016

Farming and finishing

I've been reading about task switching and multitasking and the Kanban Work In Progress concept and all that stuff.  And the Zeigarnik Effect, the human tendency to remember unfinished tasks and forget finished ones. And some website (I'll link to it if I find it again) was talking about the tendency of overloaded people to take on little tasks, just to have the pleasure of finishing them.

I've always tended to have a lot of unfinished projects. Right now I have five ideas for books, several sewing projects in work, a whole gang of planned series for this blog that I never did. And so on. And opportunities to finish things at my job are increasingly rare.

Suddenly that's too much. My tolerance for the unfinished, untidy, un-put-away, "un", seems to be exhausted. I don't know exactly what the last straw was.  But there it is. 

I seem to be aiming all that Zeigarnik overload at the farm. (Usual disclaimer: 60 by 70 foot vegetable garden. "Farm" is a nickname.) Forming a plan. Setting priorities. Planning tasks. Doing them. Done. Finished. They're not big tasks, but all the same, finishing tasks, knocking them off one by one, seem to satisfy some craving.

Even something simple like picking all the green beans and snap peas that are ready, checking every plant two or three times, instead of stopping when I'm bored and leaving the rest to mature and slow down the plant. Full basket. Empty plants. Finished.

Do I have a point here? I'm not sure. Maybe I'll find out in later posts.

Meanwhile, that is all.

2 comments:

  1. I am very guilty of doing the little things to have the pleasure of finishing them. This is clearly also because I am displacing from doing the big things. ;)

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  2. How do I keep missing comments? Hi, Vanessa!

    I'm pleased to hear confirmation of the theory. :)

    ReplyDelete