Gregory Ciotti explains the science of productivity and the Zeigarnik Effect – read his full post here.

This effect was well-known long before the advent of electronic distractors such as Facebook and Twitter – in 1900, Gelett Burgess described me to a “T” in his book, Goops and How to Be Them:

PERSEVERANCE

Tony started bright and early, clearing up his room,
Soon he found he had to stop and make a little broom;

So then he went into the yard to get a little stick,
But the garden needed weeding, so he set about it, quick!

Then he found his wagon he intended to repair,
So he went into the cellar for the hammer that was there;

In his powerful book When Good Intentions Run Smack Into Reality, the late Brian Klemmer described four different ways of approaching problems:

With the star representing a given goal and the rectangle a given obstacle,

• No. 4 thinkers have no goals at all
• No. 3 thinkers focus on too many things at… hey, squirrel! (This is my home quadrant. I’m very happy here, thank you, but I am practicing my No. 1 skills.)
• No. 2 thinkers focus on the problems, and
• No. 1 thinkers set their sights on a goal and persevere until they have attained it.

I do best when I make and prioritize to-do lists and stick to them. The old saw “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail” I have heard often enough to make me want to slap every HR manager ever minted, but there’s truth in it.

I’m going to do better…

tomorrow.

The Old Wolf has spoken.