I advise many people on how to improve their personal finances. However few act on my guidance. The majority simply nod their head and then proceed to do the direct opposite of what I advised. Many say they will start saving next year. Or they say they will open an investment account next week. They simply procrastinate the decision to start acting on their finances.
So I started researching on ways to help people overcome this bad habit of procrastinating and I landed on a concept known as the Zeigarnik Effect. The Zeigarnik Effect is one of the simplest methods for beating procrastination. The phenomenon was discovered by a Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, while sitting in a restaurant in Vienna.
She noticed that the busy waiters appeared to only remember orders that were in the process of being served, but once they were completed, the order disappeared from their memory.
To study this further, Zeigarnik asked a series of participants to do a series of simple tasks in the lab, like solving puzzles and stringing beads.
Some of the time participants were interrupted half way through and afterwards she asked them which activities they remembered doing. Interestingly, she found that people were twice as likely to remember the tasks during which they’d been interrupted than those they completed.
So, what does the Zeigarnik Effect have to do with MONEY?
The Zeigarnik Effect suggests that not finishing a task creates mental tension, which keeps it at the forefront of our memory. The only thing that will relieve this tension? Closure brought on by completion of the task.
As such, the phenomenon proposes that making a start on something – no matter how big or small – keeps it ticking way at the back of your mind until you reach the end.
So start your journey to FINANCIAL FREEDOM TODAY and use the Zeigarnik effect to push you along:
1. Establish some financial goals today. How much money do you want in the bank by end of 2019? Write this number down. Some of you well educated people have no idea how much money you really need. Yet you are happy to go to work daily in jobs you may not really enjoy. BUT you are not doing anything to change the situation.
2. Immediately make small steps towards that goal. Open a Unit trust account with STANLIB/ICEA/UAP. Don’t procrastinate just do it. Inbox and I send you the contact numbers today! Don’t try to over analyse whether unit trust are good or bad. Just do it. I opened up a STANLIB account in October 2018 and I now have over UGX 20m in that account! Nothing has changed. I have not been promoted or had a salary increment!
3. Start tracking your expenses. Just carry a notebook around and record each and every expense. Now some of you may think this is not practical. But this simple exercise is founded on a lot of research. Tracking your expenses raises your level of awareness when it comes to money. This elevated awareness enables you to make better informed decisions when it comes to money. This strategy works for almost every goal you are trying to achieve.
4. Once you START the Zeigarnik effect kicks in and it forces you to keep going until you achieve your financial goals because you want to complete what you started.
You see FINANCIAL FREEDOM is more of a MINDSET than anything else. People know what to do but don’t do it. Unless you invest in changing your mindset through acquiring the right financial knowledge you can’t really WIN at the money game.
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