Should You Feel Guilty About Your Unfinished Work? - Erin Huizenga (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Desklight’s CEO Erin Huizenga’s talk titled “Should You Feel Guilty About Your Unfinished Work?” at TEDxArlingtonHeights 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Burnout Trap

Early in my career, I worked on agency teams where the average workday was scarce on sunlight as we rolled deep into the night. We scrambled to get work done, and we were often in the office until about 1 a.m. We were given very little time for any real collaboration or reflection. I remember collapsing in my chair one night as I was struggling to come up with a third concept for a meeting at 8 a.m. the next morning.

I had nothing left. I was failing. I had no creative energy. I could not go on like this.

I thought to myself, what kind of designer am I if I can’t come up with an original idea? Am I even good enough to work here? Should I do something else with my life? This is unfair.

Questioning Productivity

How much can we expect from ourselves in one day’s work? And at what point does the demand to produce become mentally unproductive? We live in a zero-inbox world where the dream is to arrive at Monday morning with no pending work left from the week before. The thought of telling your boss something isn’t quite ready might give you pause, or it might make you want to throw up.

The Power of Unfinished Work

Here’s what I’m here to share with you today. Leaving your work unfinished is the key to unlocking greater productivity and innovation. Think about the science behind working the muscles of our bodies. We know that we have to rest between sets and to allow time between workouts so we can continue performing at a high level long term.

Our brains work the same way. They get better and stronger with exercise. And we also know that we have to pause in order to be able to reflect well in future challenges.

The Importance of Recovery

So just as our muscles need time to recover, our brains need recovery time to flourish. No recovery time leads to burnout for ourselves and our ideas. So you might be thinking, what if I have no time to actually do this?

What if my boss gets mad at me? How can I get people to actually appreciate the need to do this? So don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that you missed that deadline on your next million-dollar deal.

Clarifying Unfinished Work

And I’m certainly not suggesting that you ignore your boss when they ask when the work’s going to be done. To be clear, unfinished is not incomplete forever. It’s a deliberate delay to allow time for valuable simmering.

In the race to run Agile, we often forget about this need for time for actual creative thought and collaboration. As a learning designer, I’ve seen many high-profile deals fall apart as research is rushed, iterations are skipped, and ideas just aren’t given the proper time to simmer and brew.

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Learning from Experience

After one such deal, the CEO of a Fortune 100 company once told me, “I wish I’d spent more time really thinking about what people want, rather than throwing something over the fence before our competitors did.” In contrast, I’ve seen the example of a boss who fought back on tight timelines and would boldly, bravely walk out of meetings if adequate time wasn’t given for his team to do a good job, knowing that a rushed project would frustrate both him and his team.

Unfinished Work vs. Procrastination

So it’s important to recognize that unfinished work is not procrastination. There are some key differences. Procrastination comes from poor planning, a lack of care, and scattered intention.

In contrast, leaving something unfinished is not forgetting about it until the last minute, but it’s about being continuously mindful of the work through strategic, reflective pauses where necessary. For example, procrastination is not writing that paper until the night before it’s due.

Examples of Unfinished Work

Unfinished work is writing the outline for that paper three weeks before it’s due and slowly filling in the content with that topic top of mind. Procrastination is delaying that challenging conversation at work because it’s difficult, like you’d rather have a root canal than have this chat. Unfinished work is writing down what you’d like to say and sharing it with a trusted friend for confidential feedback.

Procrastination is rushing through that online course just to get the certification. Unfinished work is chipping away at the course because you care more about the learning than the gold star.

The Science Behind Unfinished Work

This concept of unfinished work has been studied by psychologist Bluma von Gernick. She wanted to know if people spent more time thinking about finished tasks or unfinished tasks. She learned that our brains quickly forget finished tasks, but they’re programmed to continually remind us and interrupt us with unfinished tasks.

So leaving something incomplete will actually help you think about it more throughout your day. As you program these strategic pauses, you automate this tension in your brain that can help you wrestle with ideas to land at the highest, most prized level of learning and contribution.

Personal Experience with Unfinished Work

For example, as I was working on my book outline last year, I kept coming up with content ideas during walks, at coffee shops, during times with friends and family that made sense for added book content. My brain helped me flag the content opportunities between the time that I actually wrote the outline and sat down to write the book.

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This concept of leaving something on a simmer has been a game changer for me. I’m the type of person who likes to get things done and off my plate as fast as humanly possible.

The Benefits of Pausing

Yet this practice of pause has taught me that my work is so much better and stronger when I push myself to create this tension that will guide me to more original ideas and work.

At my instructional design company, we specialize in designing learning experiences, and I often encourage my team to leave their ideas open and incomplete.

As learning experts, we know that our brains work better if we pause between intense periods of work, so we dive deeply into our projects, yet we ease up for intentional reflection and rest. We once had the opportunity to work on a professional association project, and they needed to change the scope of work in order to accommodate a tighter budget.

The Dangers of Rushing

This asked my team to work feverishly in isolation, unable to brew and contemplate, and we ultimately pushed out work that we were rushed to finish. This, of course, reminded me of earlier in my career, and since then I’ve sworn to never work on such a tight timeline again, because I knew in my heart of hearts that the work would have been so much better if we’d built in time for iteration and for feedback.

Implementing Unfinished Work

So what does this built-in buffer look like for you, and how might you take full advantage of it? Ideally, you get ideas up in a shared conference room or a virtual wall space, and together you and your team simmer on a few ideas for a few days before coming back to them.

This not only shows value and respect for your team members and their contributions, but it shows value in pausing to give clients the benefit of an unrushed project, proactively building in time for deep thinking that can stimulate new thinking. A more scientific learning technique definition for this is interleaving.

The Power of Interleaving

Interleaving is a form of learning where topics or skills are practiced in a mixed sequence. This allows my team to bounce ideas off of each other for our unique clients, and it also encourages our brains to build stronger connections, ultimately making the ideas stronger.

In addition, we strategically mix up our client partnerships in order to remain inspired. We also host monthly webinars to gain inspiration from experts in our field.

Fostering Growth and Inspiration

And we host quarterly dinners across the country to hold time and space for our own learning and growth that can inspire the work. These are all helpful because they help us cross-pollinate what we learn from these unique clients, monthly webinars, and quarterly dinners.

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As cross-pollinating does in nature, this increases our harvest. We bear more fruit because we’re able to learn from this growth.

The Proven Process

So with this, I have repeatedly seen the unlikely but proven process to be more productive. Leave your work unfinished. The phrase, “let’s sleep on it,” might be the best capacity building advice out there.

Simmering on something isn’t a bad thing, and noodling on something has the capacity to make your ideas exponentially better. The reason why we leave some foods on a simmer rather than a full boil is because too much energy, or heat in this case, breaks down the material and aromatic compounds, getting the job done faster but with much lower quality.

The Benefits of Simmering

Simmering, on the other hand, prevents burning, curdling, boiling over, and it ultimately enhances the flavors and textures. Here are some things that I do to illustrate what you might do to leave your work unfinished. At work, take work field trips.

Take your meetings to the beach, to the park. Just getting outside can be thrilling.

Practical Tips for Unfinished Work

Or take some fun work breaks. Play ping pong, foosball, you name it, as you move through your day. At home, choose two or three questions to go over with your family or your partner and revisit those questions for a few days to see what transpires.

For me and my family, some questions have been, what might you change about your day? Where might you like to travel next year? And what might you like to learn a little bit more about?

The Power of Journaling

And finally, the one that’s most special to me, journal your questions every day without answering them. So how might you practice leaving your work, ideas, and thoughts unfinished?

By allowing your work to linger, you can actually give it more attention. As you build in this necessary intention, purpose, and rest into your projects, you’ll decrease procrastination as you become more mindful of your time and work, allowing you to accomplish more.

Conclusion

As you accomplish more, you build this productive tension in your brain that will establish this ability for you to continuously grow and learn. I challenge you to leave your work unfinished. Let’s simmer.

Thank you.

Should You Feel Guilty About Your Unfinished Work? – Erin Huizenga (Transcript)