How Unfinished Business Messes With Your Head
And the strange case of to-do lists
Psychologists always want to know why we do what we do. In their pursuit, they’ve discovered multiple psychological quirks applicable to anyone with a “normally” functional brain and intact faculties. One of these, and personally relevant to me, is the Zeigarnik Effect. It states that people remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. It captures the human brain’s tendency to fixate on “open loops” or unfinished business.
I am a self-described member of the “Over 50 Club.” I’ve been there since my 20s. So, it has nothing to do with age and everything to do with the number of unfinished projects I seem to accumulate—home decoration, crafts, writing, and business ideas. It’s not that I am a good starter and never a finisher. But enough remains unfinished that my mind keeps nagging me.
I tell myself that not all starts should be finished, because some are not worth finishing. Sometimes, a start leads to something better that captures my attention and energy. Other times, I get distracted, or I just give up and feel bad, but not bad enough to do anything about it.
According to psychology research, while unfinished business messes with your head in ways sometimes hard to intuit, interestingly, it can also be used to your advantage.
There are many psychological and logistical reasons why people end up with “open loops.” I’ve written about The Psychology of Self-Sabotage, Analysis to Paralysis, and other reasons why we might end up with unfinished business. But today, I want to focus specifically on what happens to us when we do.
Where The Idea Came From
The story begins with Kurt Lewin’s concept of “life space,” the idea that behavior is shaped by both internal states and the psychological meaning of the environment. Lewin, a WWI veteran, observed that the same physical elements—rocks, trees, gullies—look different to soldiers depending on whether they were at the front or in the rear of the battlefield. Peaceful scenery in the rear becomes a potential shelter, a weapon, or a danger at the front. Everything that is psychologically relevant to a person, their goals, memories, social pressures, emotions, and expectations, occupies that life space, and competing forces within it create internal tension.
Bluma Zeigarnik, a student of Lewin, noticed a striking everyday example in a café: waiters remembered complex unpaid orders with ease, yet once the bill was paid, the details seemed to vanish. In the lab, Zeigarnik and colleagues had participants work on tasks such as puzzles, math problems, and craft projects. For some tasks, they interrupted the participants before completion. When questioned, participants remembered the interrupted tasks twice as much and in greater detail than the completed ones.
