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.

The brain is obsessed with unfinished tasks

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.

Incomplete tasks: What happens inside the brain

<ul>
<li>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.</li>
<li>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."</li>
<li>Memorize more information. Break your information up into parts. Or spread your learning over several days.</li>
<li>Remember difficult names. Learn one part of the name, then come back to the second part when your done memorizing the first.</li>
</ul>

How to capitalize on the Zeigarnik effect

<img src="https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2020/10/Oct20_12_169941618.jpg" width="630" height="354"><div class="caption" dir="ltr">
				PeskyMonkey/Getty Images
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		Summary.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
		If you’ve ever wondered why unfinished tasks seem so intrusive, it’s because of a phenomena called the Zeigarnik effect.

Failing to complete a task creates underlying cognitive tension, which is what makes you keep coming back to it. That’s why we find it easier to recall something that’s ongoing...&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<button dir="ltr">more</button>
	</div>A few months ago, a friend recommended I watch Crash Landing on You (CLOY) — a South Korean drama that has been praised around the world. I’m not a huge fan of soaps. They drag too long, force you to invest a ton of time (and emotion), and I, for one, can’t wait to find out what the end is going to be. I much prefer curling up with your traditional two-hour movie or an evening of truth with an observational documentary.But now that I have more time on the weekends — no parks to visit, no grocery stores to frequent, no friends to meet because of lockdown restrictions — I took the plunge. I watched the first two episodes of CLOY on Saturday, and another two on Sunday. Then I was sucked into a black hole. I found myself constantly thinking about the soap: What’s going to happen next? How will the story unfold? Will she or won’t she confess her love for him? Will they ever be able to meet again?*biting nails and sobbing*“Can I get to end of this already?”I finished the 16-episode show (each episode ran for a little over an hour) in four days and began to question my entire being. Why am I this way? Why can’t I just sit with the unknown?The more I thought about it, the more behavioral patterns I began to see — especially when it comes to my work. If I have an unread email, I find myself constantly wondering what it says. If I have an article that still needs editing, I can’t relax until I have a plan of execution. At the same time, if you ask me about that same article once it’s published a week later, I won’t remember much about it — at least not compared to how well I can recall the ins and outs of something on my still-to-do list.Curiosity is good they say. So I started looking for possible reasons to justify my behavior (to myself, of course).It turns out there is a name for this phenomena and it’s called the Zeigarnik effect. It was first observed by a Russian psychologist named <a href="https://www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.com/bluma-wulfovna-zeigarnik/" dir="ltr">Bluma Zeigarnik</a>. Once, while sitting at a busy restaurant, she noted that the waiters had better memories of unpaid orders (or unfinished tasks), but once the bill had been settled, the waiters had difficulty remembering the exact details of the order. Zeigarnik suggested that failing to complete a task creates underlying cognitive tension, which is what makes you keep coming back to it.“That’s interesting,” I thought, but I needed some more explanation. I reached out to Dr. Roma Kumar, a psychologist with more than 30 years of experience and the founding partner of Emotionally.in, to understand what actually happens inside our brains when we have unfinished tasks.“Once our brain receives information, it stores it in the sensory memory for a very brief time,” she explained. “Sensory memory is where information received through our five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — is stored temporarily before it moves to the short-term memory. It moves to our short-term memories only if we pay attention to the information. Many of these short-term memories are forgotten fairly quickly, but when a task isn’t complete, our brains constantly rehearse it to keep the information active. That is what creates the underlying cognitive tension. Once we complete the task, the information is easily forgotten.”Basically, when we have an unfinished task, we can’t help but torture ourselves by recalling it, over and over again, to keep it in our short-term memories. Our brains can’t let it go until it’s done. This is why TV dramas use cliffhangers to end episodes and also why I still think about what could’ve possibly happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that disappeared en route to Beijing in March 2014.I listened keenly, and as I digested, I wondered: If I can’t overcome this task-specific cognitive tension, how can I put it to good use, especially when it comes my to-do list, which is, in fact, much too long. Dr. Kumar helped me narrow it down to four ways we can use the Zeigarnik effect for good (instead of evil):1) Reduce your tendency to procrastinate: If there is a task you’ve been avoiding for a long time, just begin with the smallest thing to be done — even if that means opening a Word document and typing out the title of your report. Once you do that, the task will remain unfinished until you complete it. Since your mind needs to close the loop on that task, the constant reminder will help you take small steps to get it done and bring you closer to the final outcome.2) Get people to pay more attention to what you’re saying: Do you really want the recipient of your email to open and read the message? Try using ellipses instead of a full stop in your headline. The ellipses will leave the reader feeling like “there’s more to this,” and they’ll be sure to open your email.3) Memorize more information: Whether you are studying for a big exam or trying to memorize a speech or presentation, break your preparation down into parts. Or even better, spread your learning over several days. If you cram all the information into your head the night before your big day, you will reduce the likelihood of retaining all of it because it is not an incomplete task anymore, and hence, it is easily forgotten. While memorizing large chunks of information, brief interruptions can actually work to your advantage — it will signal to your brain that something’s not complete.&nbsp;Before a big exam, try and take deliberate breaks when you’re revising your course content. It could be as simple as reading two paragraphs, getting up to go grab a coffee or taking a lunch break, and coming back to the rest.4) Remember tough names: Since the pandemic, all networking and events are taking place online, which means you could be meeting with and getting introduced to people from different parts of the world. You might find some names hard to remember (they’re long, the pronunciation is tough, or you’re not familiar with the accent). A good way to remember difficult names is to learn them in parts (that is, introduce interruptions). Learn one part of the name, memorize it, and then come back to the second part when you’re done memorizing the first. You’ll find it much easier to remember them this way.So while those unfinished tasks will continue to haunt me, I now know that I can put that energy to good use and actually get things done that I would otherwise struggle with.<UL><LI><author-avatar data-url="" data-author-name="Vasundhara Sawhney" data-js-target="author-avatar">
					VS
				</author-avatar><div dir="ltr">
					
						<a href="https://hbr.org/search?term=vasundhara%20sawhney&amp;search_type=search-all" dir="ltr">Vasundhara Sawhney</a> is a Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review.
					
		</div></LI></UL>

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

health

Health

problemsolving

Problem Solving

timemanagement

Time Management

A few months ago, a friend recommended I watch Crash Landing on You (CLOY) — a South Korean drama that has been praised around the world. I’m not a huge fan of soaps. They drag too long, force you to invest a ton of time (and emotion), and I, for one, can’t wait to find out what the end is going to be. I much prefer curling up with your traditional two-hour movie or an evening of truth with an observational documentary.

But now that I have more time on the weekends — no parks to visit, no grocery stores to frequent, no friends to meet because of lockdown restrictions — I took the plunge. I watched the first two episodes of CLOY on Saturday, and another two on Sunday. Then I was sucked into a black hole. I found myself constantly thinking about the soap: What’s going to happen next? How will the story unfold? Will she or won’t she confess her love for him? Will they ever be able to meet again?

“Can I get to end of this already?”

I finished the 16-episode show (each episode ran for a little over an hour) in four days and began to question my entire being. Why am I this way? Why can’t I just sit with the unknown?

The more I thought about it, the more behavioral patterns I began to see — especially when it comes to my work. If I have an unread email, I find myself constantly wondering what it says. If I have an article that still needs editing, I can’t relax until I have a plan of execution. At the same time, if you ask me about that same article once it’s published a week later, I won’t remember much about it — at least not compared to how well I can recall the ins and outs of something on my still-to-do list.

Curiosity is good they say. So I started looking for possible reasons to justify my behavior (to myself, of course).

It turns out there is a name for this phenomena and it’s called the Zeigarnik effect. It was first observed by a Russian psychologist named <a dir="ltr" href="https://www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.com/bluma-wulfovna-zeigarnik/">Bluma Zeigarnik </a>. Once, while sitting at a busy restaurant, she noted that the waiters had better memories of unpaid orders (or unfinished tasks), but once the bill had been settled, the waiters had difficulty remembering the exact details of the order. Zeigarnik suggested that failing to complete a task creates underlying cognitive tension, which is what makes you keep coming back to it.

“That’s interesting,” I thought, but I needed some more explanation. I reached out to Dr. Roma Kumar, a psychologist with more than 30 years of experience and the founding partner of Emotionally.in, to understand what actually happens inside our brains when we have unfinished tasks.

“Once our brain receives information, it stores it in the sensory memory for a very brief time,” she explained. “Sensory memory is where information received through our five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch — is stored temporarily before it moves to the short-term memory. It moves to our short-term memories only if we pay attention to the information. Many of these short-term memories are forgotten fairly quickly, but when a task isn’t complete, our brains constantly rehearse it to keep the information active. That is what creates the underlying cognitive tension. Once we complete the task, the information is easily forgotten.”

Basically, when we have an unfinished task, we can’t help but torture ourselves by recalling it, over and over again, to keep it in our short-term memories. Our brains can’t let it go until it’s done. This is why TV dramas use cliffhangers to end episodes and also why I still think about what could’ve possibly happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 that disappeared en route to Beijing in March 2014.

I listened keenly, and as I digested, I wondered: If I can’t overcome this task-specific cognitive tension, how can I put it to good use, especially when it comes my to-do list, which is, in fact, much too long. Dr. Kumar helped me narrow it down to four ways we can use the Zeigarnik effect for good (instead of evil):

1) Reduce your tendency to procrastinate: If there is a task you’ve been avoiding for a long time, just begin with the smallest thing to be done — even if that means opening a Word document and typing out the title of your report. Once you do that, the task will remain unfinished until you complete it. Since your mind needs to close the loop on that task, the constant reminder will help you take small steps to get it done and bring you closer to the final outcome.

2) Get people to pay more attention to what you’re saying: Do you really want the recipient of your email to open and read the message? Try using ellipses instead of a full stop in your headline. The ellipses will leave the reader feeling like “there’s more to this,” and they’ll be sure to open your email.

3) Memorize more information: Whether you are studying for a big exam or trying to memorize a speech or presentation, break your preparation down into parts. Or even better, spread your learning over several days. If you cram all the information into your head the night before your big day, you will reduce the likelihood of retaining all of it because it is not an incomplete task anymore, and hence, it is easily forgotten. While memorizing large chunks of information, brief interruptions can actually work to your advantage — it will signal to your brain that something’s not complete. Before a big exam, try and take deliberate breaks when you’re revising your course content. It could be as simple as reading two paragraphs, getting up to go grab a coffee or taking a lunch break, and coming back to the rest.

4) Remember tough names: Since the pandemic, all networking and events are taking place online, which means you could be meeting with and getting introduced to people from different parts of the world. You might find some names hard to remember (they’re long, the pronunciation is tough, or you’re not familiar with the accent). A good way to remember difficult names is to learn them in parts (that is, introduce interruptions). Learn one part of the name, memorize it, and then come back to the second part when you’re done memorizing the first. You’ll find it much easier to remember them this way.

So while those unfinished tasks will continue to haunt me, I now know that I can put that energy to good use and actually get things done that I would otherwise struggle with.

<ul><li><author-avatar data-author-name="Vasundhara Sawhney" data-js-target="author-avatar" data-url="">VS </author-avatar><div dir="ltr"><a dir="ltr" href="https://hbr.org/search?term=vasundhara%20sawhney&amp;search_type=search-all">Vasundhara Sawhney </a>is a Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review. </div> </li> </ul>

Why Your Brain Dwells on Unfinished Tasks

The brain is obsessed with unfinished tasks

Incomplete tasks: What happens inside the brain

How to capitalize on the Zeigarnik effect

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