Prioritisation: should nearly finished work come first?
Finishing what is almost done seems a reasonable way to organise the working day. The managerial question is more precise: does proximity to completion justify placing one piece of work ahead of another that is less advanced but more important?
What the literature establishes
Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky and Yuhuang Zheng (2006, Journal of Marketing Research) show, notably in loyalty programmes, that activity accelerates as participants approach a reward. Their findings support the goal-gradient hypothesis: the remaining distance helps determine the intensity of effort. They do not, however, demonstrate that workplace tasks nearing completion deserve a higher priority.
Perceived progress can itself mobilise effort
Joseph C. Nunes and Xavier Drèze (2006, Journal of Consumer Research) show that an artificial head start towards a goal can encourage completion, even when the remaining effort is identical. Presenting a journey as already under way is therefore not necessarily equivalent to presenting it as yet to begin. For managers, this suggests a point of caution: displayed progress could influence time allocation independently of the value of the outcome.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that nearly finished work should always be viewed with suspicion. That would confuse a motivational mechanism with a decision error: completing a piece of work may unblock a dependency, enable delivery or avoid an actual penalty. The distinction is to justify its priority through the consequences of completion, rather than the satisfaction of closing it. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these data cannot decide
These studies concern goal pursuit in consumer settings, not choices between competing workplace assignments. They establish neither an optimal progress threshold nor a universal rule for sequencing work. In practice, the label “nearly finished” may also conceal an uncertain approval process: a completion percentage is no substitute for describing the remaining work.
A practical check in Berne
Within SHR — Swiss Human Resources' “Time Management & Prioritisation” programme, an exercise applicable in Berne is to review priority decisions over two weeks, whether they concern a federal administration file, a public health analysis, a telecom delivery or a precision manufacturing batch. Whenever work moves ahead of something else because it is nearly finished, record the remaining work, the expected consequence of completion and the assignment being deferred. Then calculate the proportion of these decisions supported by an explicit consequence other than “finishing”, and check at the end of the period whether that consequence occurred. This measure does not prove a productivity gain; it checks whether proximity to completion is accompanied by a documented operational justification. To go further: explore the Time Management & Prioritisation training in Bern, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Time Management & Prioritisation in Bern
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