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elfsThe Zeigarnik Effect, described by Russian psychologist Bulma Zeigarnik, is the idea that "open" projects in our to-do list consume cognitive resources, draining those resources away from whatever it is that we're doing.
The Dunning-Krueger Effect is popularized with the simple saying that "Someone incompetent in a given field doesn't have the skills, training, or experience to know what it means to be competent, so they tend to over-estimate their abilities in that field." The classic examples come from politics, where people like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, who are clearly incompetent as leaders, continue to use charisma, force of will, and other resources to gain power, only to know absolutely nothing about how to wield it properly.
The flip side to Dunning-Krueger is that competent people know all too well what their field entails, and so tend to seriously underestimate their skills because they know other people who know so much more about some specific sub-disciplines. I feel this a lot. As a "programmer," I know I'm good enough to hire at a very senior level. I know a lot about enterprise-level programming, yet I love systems programming and I also know how little I know about it. At the edge, we end up with Imposter Syndrome: the notion that someday "they" (your co-workers, your github peers) will find out how little you know and laugh you out of the room.
The trick to managing the Keigarnik Effect is usually labeled under a productivity system, most commonly GTD (Getting Things Done). You write down the project and the ideas around it, and then your brain is satisfied that the project has been dealt with.
Which is, sadly, a dark problem: because if you're not good about reviewing your projects and your to-dos, you end up with a bunch of mentally "closed" projects that you have no idea when, if ever, you'll get back to them. This is one of my biggest problems, along with the classic ADHD "starts a project, figures out how it should work, then moves on to the next project without finishing it." I really need to work on that one, too.
The Dunning-Krueger Effect is popularized with the simple saying that "Someone incompetent in a given field doesn't have the skills, training, or experience to know what it means to be competent, so they tend to over-estimate their abilities in that field." The classic examples come from politics, where people like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, who are clearly incompetent as leaders, continue to use charisma, force of will, and other resources to gain power, only to know absolutely nothing about how to wield it properly.
The flip side to Dunning-Krueger is that competent people know all too well what their field entails, and so tend to seriously underestimate their skills because they know other people who know so much more about some specific sub-disciplines. I feel this a lot. As a "programmer," I know I'm good enough to hire at a very senior level. I know a lot about enterprise-level programming, yet I love systems programming and I also know how little I know about it. At the edge, we end up with Imposter Syndrome: the notion that someday "they" (your co-workers, your github peers) will find out how little you know and laugh you out of the room.
The trick to managing the Keigarnik Effect is usually labeled under a productivity system, most commonly GTD (Getting Things Done). You write down the project and the ideas around it, and then your brain is satisfied that the project has been dealt with.
Which is, sadly, a dark problem: because if you're not good about reviewing your projects and your to-dos, you end up with a bunch of mentally "closed" projects that you have no idea when, if ever, you'll get back to them. This is one of my biggest problems, along with the classic ADHD "starts a project, figures out how it should work, then moves on to the next project without finishing it." I really need to work on that one, too.
