Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength

by Roy F. Baumeister

the Zeigarnik effect: Uncompleted tasks and unmet goals tend to pop into one’s mind. Once the task is completed and the goal reached, however, this stream of reminders comes to a stop.

The two psychologists came up with a word for these ideas: standards. Self-awareness involves a process of comparing yourself to standards. Initially the assumption was that the standards were usually ideals—notions of what would constitute perfection. This led to the conclusion that self-awareness would nearly always be unpleasant, because the self is never perfect.