What do Tony Soprano and Game of Thrones have to do with effective learning and training?
As I mentioned previously with the Zeigarnik or Incompletion Effect, the mind likes closure and is motivated towards completion. Considering that people tend to remember unresolved or unfinished things much better than those that have been completed, it can therefore be highly effective to spilt the learning content that you are presenting to people to begin a topic, area or learning activity at one moment in time and to complete it in another.
At a practical level, this would mean dividing up the content and deciding how you could present it so that you feed in and add to the different elements at different times. That would also mean dividing the various aspects of your learning activities. You might decide to start an activity before lunch and continue with it after, start one day, continue the next, etc. You could even weave activities within other activities to open various loops and close them at different times.
This way of doing things might not always have been seen to be good practice until now. Training sessions, classroom lessons, university lectures etc., have traditionally been self-contained. Each one can tend to focus on one topic area without much connection from one to the next.
From the trainer or teacher’s point of view, leaving some unfinished business will mean that the trainees or learners are more motivated, even if it’s at an unconscious level. Furthermore, it will mean that the teacher or trainer will have to provide some practical follow up for their trainees or learners to help them connect things from one learning event to the next. This can help to develop creativity, ensure more successful learning and, in the end, allow for things to get done much more effectively.
You can see this Incompletion or Zeigarnik Effect in action in TV series. Viewers tune in week after week to see how the latest cliff-hanger will evolve. Very often, an episode will start with ‘Previously on Homeland…’, and then at the end, there is often a short trailer with highlights to what is to come. Constantly, different plot lines are running simultaneously and again; how these evolve can be very motivating over time.
My favourite example will always be the open-ended ending to the highly popular and successful HBO series ‘The Sopranos’. The final scene became the subject of much discussion, controversy and analysis after its original broadcast and is still a heated debate today. Just like the final season of Game of Thrones!
What would it be like if you trainees or learners felt so addicted to what you were teaching them that they felt the need to binge study the latest ‘series’ of content that you were presenting them?
On the other hand, outside the learning context, it is fair to say that it can be highly stressful if we allow too many loose ends in our life. As a result, it’s essential to get started in whatever way possible and strive to achieve some kind of balance.
So why don’t you make a list of all of the unfinished business you have in your life at the moment and consider all the extra energy and creativity you will have as you begin to work through it?
