Why Your Brain Dwells on Unfinished Tasks - Deepstash
Why Your Brain Dwells on Unfinished Tasks

Why Your Brain Dwells on Unfinished Tasks

Curated from: hbr.org

Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:

3 ideas

·

24.4K reads

593

4

Explore the World's Best Ideas

Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.

The brain is obsessed with unfinished tasks

The brain is obsessed with unfinished tasks

When we have unfinished tasks, we think about them continuously. But the moment they are completed, we forget about them. If we have unread email, we constantly wonder what it says. But once it has been dealt with, we often cannot recall the details of it.

The name for this phenomena is called the Zeigarnik effect and named after Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.

1.09K

9.75K reads

Incomplete tasks: What happens inside the brain

Once our brain receives information, it temporarily stores sensory memory (sight, hearing, smells, taste, and touch). If we pay attention to the information, it moves to our short-term memories.

If the task is incomplete, our brains can't let it go until it's done. That is why TV dramas use cliffhangers to end episodes.

891

7.72K reads

How to capitalize on the Zeigarnik effect

  • Reduce your tendency to procrastinate. If you have a task you've been avoiding, begin with the smallest thing to be done. The desire to close the loop will help you take small steps to get it done.
  • Get people to take note of what you're saying. Try using ellipses instead of a full stop in your headline so that your reader will feel like "there's more to this."
  • Memorize more information. Break your information up into parts. Or spread your learning over several days.
  • Remember difficult names. Learn one part of the name, then come back to the second part when your done memorizing the first.

1.01K

6.97K reads

IDEAS CURATED BY

carson_

Running away from your problems is a race you`ll never win.

Carson 's ideas are part of this journey:

7 Books on Habits

Learn more about problemsolving with this collection

How to break bad habits

How habits are formed

The importance of consistency

Related collections

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Personalized microlearning

100+ Learning Journeys

Access to 200,000+ ideas

Access to the mobile app

Unlimited idea saving

Unlimited history

Unlimited listening to ideas

Downloading & offline access

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates