Deep Work_ Rules for focused success in a distracted world ( PDFDrive.com )

open, I quickly skim every task in every list, and then look at the next few days on my
calendar. These two actions ensure that there’s nothing urgent I’m forgetting or any
important deadlines or appointments sneaking up on me. I have, at this point, reviewed
everything that’s on my professional plate. To end the ritual, I use this information to
make a rough plan for the next day. Once the plan is created, I say, “Shutdown
complete,” and my work thoughts are done for the day.
The concept of a shutdown ritual might at first seem extreme, but there’s a good
reason for it: the Zeigarnik effect. This effect, which is named for the experimental
work of the early-twentieth-century psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, describes the
ability of incomplete tasks to dominate our attention. It tells us that if you simply stop
whatever you are doing at five p.m. and declare, “I’m done with work until
tomorrow,” you’ll likely struggle to keep your mind clear of professional issues, as
the many obligations left unresolved in your mind will, as in Bluma Zeigarnik’s
experiments, keep battling for your attention throughout the evening (a battle that
they’ll often win).
At first, this challenge might seem unresolvable. As any busy knowledge worker
can attest, there are always tasks left incomplete. The idea that you can ever reach a
point where all your obligations are handled is a fantasy. Fortunately, we don’t need
to complete a task to get it off our minds. Riding to our rescue in this matter is our
friend from earlier in the rule, the psychologist Roy Baumeister, who wrote a paper
with E.J. Masicampo playfully titled “Consider It Done!” In this study, the two
researchers began by replicating the Zeigarnik effect in their subjects (in this case, the
researchers assigned a task and then cruelly engineered interruptions), but then found
that they could significantly reduce the effect’s impact by asking the subjects, soon
after the interruption, to make a plan for how they would later complete the
incomplete task. To quote the paper: “Committing to a specific plan for a goal may
therefore not only facilitate attainment of the goal but may also free cognitive
resources for other pursuits.”
The shutdown ritual described earlier leverages this tactic to battle the Zeigarnik
effect. While it doesn’t force you to explicitly identify a plan for every single task in
your task list (a burdensome requirement), it does force you to capture every task in a
common list, and then review these tasks before making a plan for the next day. This
ritual ensures that no task will be forgotten: Each will be reviewed daily and tackled
when the time is appropriate. Your mind, in other words, is released from its duty to
keep track of these obligations at every moment—your shutdown ritual has taken over
that responsibility.