The Bottomless Bowl Spell

Lead forms sometimes work too well. Applicants would occasionally write to us and say, “I applied for the loan. Where’s my decision?”

It turned out many applicants thought they had applied after submitting our eligibility check. We’d added lots of reward and a big CONGRATULATIONS, and that, for them, was enough to think they’d finished.

This week’s spell: we stop when the container says we’re done, not when the work is. I call it the Bottomless Bowl.

This is the other half of last week’s spell, the Head Start Spell. That one moved where people start. This one moves where they stop. If you missed it, see more here.

📜 The Lore: what the research says

The famous study here is the “bottomless soup bowl,” where bowls secretly refilled through a tube under the table and diners kept eating. It comes with an asterisk: Cornell announced a misconduct finding in 2018.

Here’s the research that holds up. (I personally tested this at a curry buffet yesterday, and my subsequent roundness adds some anecdotal oomph.)

1. The container decides, not the stomach.

A Penn State team had a restaurant serve its pasta entrée 50% bigger on some days, at the same price.

• Customers ate 43% more of it.
• They rated both portions as equally appropriate.
• Across dozens of studies, doubling a portion means people eat about 35% more.

It works in reverse, too. When times are tough, you may have noticed your favorite restaurant’s portions shrinking while the price stays the same. Research suggests that’s a fairly safe way to cut costs:

• Shoppers react far more to a price increase than to a smaller package.
• When Dutch restaurants trimmed meat portions by about 12.5% and doubled the vegetables, diners were just as satisfied with their visit.
• The fine print: when people do notice, it can feel sneaky.

📖 Unit bias: we treat one unit (a plate, a scoop, a meeting) as the right amount, whatever its size.

2. Time works the same way.

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in The Economist in 1955, half joking. In 1967, psychologists Bryan and Locke found that people given extra time set easier goals and worked more slowly.

Procrastinators, you may have something going for you. If you have two hours, you use two hours. If you have weeks, the perfectionist in you takes weeks.

📖 Parkinson’s law: work stretches to fill the time we give it.

3. Every break is a place to stop.

Marketing professors Cheema and Soman (2008) split the same chocolate into smaller wrapped pieces. People ate it more slowly, because each wrapper asked: keep going, or stop here?

📖 Partitioning: split something into smaller units, and people treat each break as an ending.

You might have the instinct to give people breaks at events, but sometimes it means people leave or become disengaged. Be intentional with your break-ups!

✨ Practical Magic: try this at work

Leaders: book the meeting you need.

Schedule an hour, and you use an hour. I love a good 15-minute meeting, even if people look a little offended when a 30-minute meeting ends after five: “Great, decision made. Let’s go!”

Pro tip: turn on Google Calendar’s “speedy meetings,” and 30-minute meetings become 25 minutes and hour-long meetings become 50. Try 15 and see how often it’s enough.

Leaders: say what “done” means at every checkpoint.

Checkpoints help you redirect early, but each one is a break, and too many make people think the project is finished. The important part here is to set the goal before the next meeting, versus just calling it a check-in.

I’ve noticed this in my own work as a manager. If I give an assignment too far in advance, I can almost guarantee it won’t get done early. It might not even get started until the last week.

Pro tip: for long projects, have something due each week.

Marketers: put the finish line in the right place.

That’s the lending lesson from the top. There’s a careful balance between encouragement and having people stop, so be explicit:

• Cheer progress, not completion: “Step 1 of 3 done” instead of “Congratulations!”
• Name the next step on the screen where people are most likely to stop.
• Save the big celebration for the step that counts.
• Put the most challenging part toward the end, when people are already on track.

Marketers: if you say “two minutes,” mean two minutes.

A time estimate is a container, and customers hold us to it. In some industries, this is regulated. Time the flow with a stopwatch before the number goes in the copy.

Why it matters: uncertain waits feel longer than known ones, as service researcher David Maister put it in 1985. A broken estimate turns a known wait into an uncertain one, and that’s when the frustration starts.

• Give a range you can beat (“3 to 5 minutes”), not your best case.
• Show progress as people go.
• Fill the wait. Houston’s airport cut baggage complaints sharply by making passengers walk farther to collect their bags, so the wait felt like part of the trip.

☠️ Curse Collection: where it backfires

A form throws an error. You try again, and again, then contact support and start another bottomless bowl of back-and-forth. When people say they hate technology, this is the feeling they mean.

The counter-spell:

• Show how many steps are left, honestly.
• After two failed tries, offer a way out: saved progress or a person.
• Give every flow a clear end.

A good process is a careful balance between encouragement, efficiency, and making sure you get exactly what you need. Give people a proper off-ramp, and respect their frustration. And don’t let fanfare get in the way of clear next steps.

💬 Your turn

A quick reminder of last week’s Head Start Spell: people are more motivated to finish when they start with progress already made. Give people a blank eight-space loyalty card, and 19% finish. Give them a ten-space card with two stamps already filled, and 34% finish.

And your comments took it even further. Thank you, Kishore, Geoffrey and Reid!

• Kishore would use it for subscription renewals. Instead of greeting customers with a fresh start every month, show them the progress they’ve built up over time. In his words, “People are more likely to value a journey when they can see how far they’ve come.”
• Geoffrey would have project managers mark step 1 as complete, even if it’s just “Create Project Plan.” A status of “Not Started” is demoralizing, while “In Progress, step 3” builds energy and buy-in. He also warned about the reset button: change a rewards program mid-flight, and loyal customers remember it for years.
• Reid pointed out that “a small sense of progress can make a remarkable difference in motivation,” and that how we frame the customer journey can shape behavior as much as the reward itself.

Where does a container decide when people stop in your work? Tell me in the comments. I’ll share my favorites in the next issue.

Read and comment on LinkedIn

🪄 Meanwhile, at the wand shop

Kevin, last issue’s beloved wand, had a rough week. His devoted owner bought the shop’s new Wand Polish (one drop a week, three months per jar) and poured half the jar on in a single evening.

Kevin is sticky. Kevin has not forgiven anyone.

The polish now comes in twelve tiny vials, labeled by week. The goblins in accounting call this “partitioning.” Kevin calls it about time.

Until next time, may your meetings be short and your forms have a clear ending.

Claire, sometimes wizard