Task Disoriented

That we remember, think about, and dream of unresolved issues has been a central feature of psychological study for several decades. In 1927, Bluma Zeigarnik and her mentor Kurt Tewin, found that people had far better memories for interrupted tasks than completed ones. For example, if you are interrupted just before the end of an exciting movie, you will remember the movie more vividly and for a longer time than if you saw the movie’s resolution. People have a basic need for completing and resolving tasks.

-James Pennebaker,
Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, p90.

Our attention is held by what is incomplete. For some tasks, such as starting a fire, we know what completion is. Most tasks involve fuzzier outcomes. Completion is more a sense of confidence the current state is within some window of tolerance. How do we know complete?

Three primary motivations - do, bond, know - help organize a sense of completion. Have we taken the actions necessary to sustain a state within a window of tolerance? Do others provide us feedback that the state is tolerable? Can we reasonably inhibit our doubt that the state is and will remain tolerable?

Too often, we equate the word ‘task’ with a checklist of physical actions. If the word task indicates ‘resolution,’ how do we satisfy all three motivations?

If resolution is sustained tolerance, its antagonists are the threats of helplessness - I can’t, I’m unworthy, I’m ignorant. Resilience might be best described as the skills which keep the window of tolerance appropriately wide and nurture a sense of ableness during adversity.

The sentence - “People have a basic need for completing and resolving tasks” - speaks to a very primal psychological need. The idea of task is a concrete, external action - finish watching the movie. The idea of “completing and resolving” speaks to an internal tolerance - a fuzzy, momentary state maintained through self regulation.

But it’s so much easier to be task oriented...