How to Become a Great Finisher

How to Become a Great Finisher

The road to hell may or may not be paved with good intentions, but the road to failure surely is. Take a good look at the people you work with, and you'll find lots of Good Starters — individuals who want to succeed, and have promising ideas for how to make that happen. They begin each new pursuit with enthusiasm, or at the very least, a commitment to getting the job done.

And then something happens. Somewhere along the way, they lose steam. They get bogged down with other projects. They start procrastinating and miss deadlines. Their projects take forever to finish, if they get finished at all.

Does all this sound familiar? Maybe a little too familiar? If you are guilty of being a Good Starter, but a lousy finisher — at work or in your personal life — you have a very common problem. After all, David Allen's Getting Things Done wouldn't be a huge bestseller if people could easily figure out how to get things done on their own.

More than anything else, becoming a Great Finisher is about staying motivated from a project's beginning to its end. Recent research has uncovered the reason why that can be so difficult, and a simple and effective strategy you can use to keep motivation high.

In their studies, University of Chicago psychologists Minjung Koo and Ayelet Fishbach examined how people pursuing goals were affected by focusing on either how far they had already come (to-date thinking) or what was left to be accomplished (to-go thinking). People routinely use both kinds of thinking to motivate themselves. A marathon runner may choose to think about the miles already traveled or the ones that lie ahead. A dieter who wants to lose 30 pounds may try to fight temptation by reminding themselves of the 20 pounds already lost, or the 10 left to go.

Intuitively, both approaches have their appeal. But too much to-date thinking, focusing on what you've accomplished so far, will actually undermine your motivation to finish rather than sustain it.

Koo and Fishbach's studies consistently show that when we are pursuing a goal and consider how far we've already come, we feel a premature sense of accomplishment and begin to slack off. For instance, in one study, college students studying for an exam in an important course were significantly more motivated to study after being told that they had 52% of the material left to cover, compared to being told that they had already completed 48%.

When we focus on progress made, we're also more likely to try to achieve a sense of "balance" by making progress on other important goals. This is classic Good Starter behavior — lots of pots on the stove, but nothing is ever ready to eat.

If, instead, we focus on how far we have left to go (to-go thinking), motivation is not only sustained, it's heightened. Fundamentally, this has to do with the way our brains are wired. To-go thinking helps us tune in to the presence of a discrepancy between where we are now and where we want to be. When the human brain detects a discrepancy, it reacts by throwing resources at it: attention, effort, deeper processing of information, and willpower.

In fact, it's the discrepancy that signals that an action is needed — to-date thinking masks that signal. You might feel good about the ground you've covered, but you probably won't cover much more.

Great Finishers force themselves to stay focused on the goal, and never congratulate themselves on a job half-done. Great managers create Great Finishers by reminding their employees to keep their eyes on the prize, and are careful to avoid giving effusive praise or rewards for hitting milestones "along the way." Encouragement is important, but to keep your team motivated, save the accolades for a job well — and completely — done.




HEIDI GRANT HALVORSON
Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011).

She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success,

can be found at www.heidigranthalvorson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson.

Boredom At Work Increases Stress.

Coming to work, chilling on the phone and surfing the internet all day, may sound like a dream job on paper, but in reality, it is more damaging than a stressful day. As the boredom boom sweeps across offices worldwide, many desi workers too, are wasting away at their desks, left unchallenged and uninspired. As an employer, you could lose your best employees. And as a worker, you could stop taking risks, forget how to think out of the box and be setting yourself up to be a job hopper.


On this Shwetambara Sabharwal ,Psychologist says- When you are not assigned enough responsibility, or not interested in the task at hand, you start brooding over other issues. Anxiety over the future and past professional problems begin to surface in an idle mind. You start wondering whether you are in the right job and whether you are incapable of handling responsibilities. That’s how non-productivity and boredom at work can increase stress levels.


In order to tap this, Bosses should:

1. Give employees more structured roles.
2. Make tasks varied and feedback-oriented.
3. Team leaders should set short-term goals.
4. Work should be result-oriented.

Resolving conflicts at work

Conflicts are inevitable between people at any time but the ones at work place can have a negative effect on ones performance and health. Handling work conflict can take its toll on most of us. There are some better ways to cope up with such negative effects or conflicts themselves. Here we are trying to outline the ways and means of not only dealing with conflicts but also approaches to avoid them as much as possible.

Conflicts at workplace are often a common concern for managers and seniors. The manager’s job is not only to allocate work and give guidance but also to make the team work as a close unit.
To be able to avoid conflicts in the team, it is advisable to have pre-meetings with team members:

1. Speak with each member about project objectives, deadlines etc.
2. The roles of each team members and the leader of the team through specific phases of the project need to be clearly defined.

In case conflicts arise a manager need to find out,

1. need to be quick to find out the details from his team.
2. need to then take an action immediately.
This is not the time to comfort troubled subordinates, nor is it appropriate to threaten them. A middle ground would prove to be the best bet for an objective fact-finding mission.
3. Schedule a one-on-one meeting with the troubled employee; begin by outlining the problem with clear, detailed facts ad examples.
4. Refer to previously documented objectives, illustrating how the current issue is specifically impacting those goals.
5. Find out if there are any barriers coming in the way of work. Try to remove them through training, intervention with other department, or by a re-evaluation of priorities based on the needs of the group.
There is a proper time to interfere in the event of a conflict. Before a manager says anything, it’s important to find out whether his involvement would help or hinder the situation. Stepping in to intervene between colleagues who are at odds with each other can be a touchy issue. Keep the following tips in mind:

A manager must make sure to come across as someone who is unbiased and open. He also needs to be a good listener and a creative problem solver. Above all, he must be trustworthy in the eyes of his team mates and discreet. Whether or not he can diffuse the conflict has a lot to do with how he is perceived by the two parties involved in the conflict. It would prove to be an advantage if the manager has the respect of the people involved.

Managing the conflict or differences is best done by understanding the conflict style because conflict can also be healthy and creative. The best thing is to handle it constructively.

Conflicts may arise between you and your boss, friend or partner or in people working with each other in close proximity for a long time and is common especially amongst those having the same goals but who disagree on the means of by which they can be achieved. Even a minor conflict can create tension, so it is important to know the root cause of it because often its magnitude is hugely out of proportion to the disagreement that caused it while sometimes the problem seems trivial but actually there may be some thing deep-rooted.

Today, work stress is a major problem that afflicts people. Basically, any argument can result in anger, anxiety and stress. These can then reflect upon overall health, giving rise to high blood pressure, headache or even depression. The sooner the differences are resolved the better. If one is not able to control his anger then h should seek the help through counseling.

When a disagreement occurs then one should not over react. If so then the ‘opponent’ will never consider the other person’s viewpoint. By not over reacting at least you will find some consideration from the opponent. There are people who can manage their differences well. Everybody can do it but for that one needs to understand the conflict style. If one is able to do this then it helps one to act differently as suggested by expert psychologists.

Recognize, which style you belong to and try and change. Conflict in work relationship is natural. Communication and compromise is the key here. Accusations are a big ‘no’. Do not let conflicts go out of hand.