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The Zeigarnik Effect Is Why You Keep Thinking of Unfinished Work
Get More Out of Your Study Sessions
- Break up your study sessions rather than try to cram it all in the night before the test. By studying information in increments, you will be more likely to remember it until test day.
- If you are struggling to memorize something important, momentary interruptions might actually work to your advantage. While you are focusing on other things, you will find yourself mentally returning to the information you were studying.
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The Zeigarnik Effect
Unfinished work continues to exert an influence, even when we try to move on to other things.
When you start working on something but do not finish it, thoughts of the unfinished work continue to pop into your mind even when you've moved on to other things. Such thoughts urge you to go back and finish it.
Books, video games and tv-series all take advantage of this effect.
The Zeigarnik effect and memory
It reveals a great deal about how memory works. Zeigarnik suggested that failing to complete a task creates underlying cognitive tension. This results in greater mental effort and rehearsal in order to keep the task at the forefront of awareness. Once completed, the mind is then able to let go of these efforts.
You can even use this psychological phenomenon to your advantage.
Get More Out of Your Study Sessions
- Break up your study sessions rather than try to cram it all in the night before the test. By studying information in increments, you will be more likely to remember it until test day.
- If you are struggling to memorize something important, momentary interruptions might actually work to your advantage. While you are focusing on other things, you will find yourself mentally returning to the information you were studying.
Overcome Procrastination
Take the first step, no matter how small. Once you've begun—but not finished—your work, you will find yourself thinking of the task until, at last, you finish it.
This approach can not only help motivate you to finish, but it can also lead to a sense of accomplishment once you finally finish a job and are able to apply your mental energies elsewhere.
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The Zeigarnik Effect
It suggests that not finishing a task creates mental tension, which keeps it at the forefront of our memory.
The only thing that will relieve this tension is the closure brought ...
The Zeigarnik Effect for beating procrastination
The phenomenon proposes that making a start on something, no matter how big or small, keeps it ticking way at the back of your mind until you reach the end.
Thus, getting the ball rolling might be a good antidote to procrastination.
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When Studies Are Untrustworthy
Many layers of uncertainty along with thinking errors of scientists (blind spots) make the research or evidence untrustworthy about 42 percent of the time, according to a study.
Advice For Reading Scientific Studies
When we read scientific studies, it helps to keep in mind the following:
- Scientists are prone to error just like everyone else.
- Single source claims are dubious.
- There is a lot we don’t know.
- We should not be biased towards a particular outcome.
- Independent tests of the findings can be done if possible.
- Proof of something does not mean it is true, and a lack of proof does not mean it is false.
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"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do t..."
Ernest Hemingway
The “useful interruption”
It's a psychological trick to avoid work paralysis, inspired by Ernest Hemingway's discipline of writing and it means to stop a task when everything is going well.
You will be more motivated to get back to a task that you've interrupted when it was going well.
Not finishing a task
Studies show that it can actually be beneficial.
To get all the positive effects from this (and to get back at it) you should feel that you are close to completing that task and you also should feel challenged enough by it, to care about its completion.
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