Unfinished Work Fuels Creativity - The Zeigarnik Effect In Action

The nagging feeling you experience when walking away from your creative endeavors is more than guilt. It's a call to resolve the facets left unfinished in the task. Even though it may feel like a guilty distraction from the new task in front of you, there's a deeper truth to that sensation.

It's a psychological effect known as the Zeigarnik Effect. The lingering feeling to resolve unfinished tasks is a memory tool that can be leveraged into creative output unlike what you've seen before. It's a leverageable tool that can be used to motivate and create when factored into a workflow or system.

The concept is simple: leave certain tasks unfinished to create that cognitive dissonance, motivating you to go back and complete those tasks later on. By deliberately leaving work for tomorrow, you encourage yourself to return to the work and complete it.

The key to using this effect comes from a reframing of what's happening in your mind. Many people assume that the Zeigarnik Effect is guilt-based, but it's rooted in our desire as humans to achieve and accomplish.

It's psychological fuel for your creative fire, when harnessed with knowledge and intent.

The Zeigarnik Effect refers to a psychological tendency for people to remember the things they leave unfinished, rather than the tasks they finish.

A Soviet psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, was among the first to start documenting this phenomenon back in the 1920s. Their discovery came about from observation restaurant waiters, of all things. Zeigarnik noticed that these servers would remember even complex orders with clarity, but couldn't recall what a customer ordered once they paid the bill.

This led to a series of experiments designed to test memory based on if and when tasks participants engaged in were interrupted. Researchers would compare responses from participants that had complex tasks like threading beads or solving puzzles interrupted versus left alone, and found that more detailed responses came from those that had their work interrupted.

Later research in the 1980s expanded on this idea. Kenneth McGraw conducted a study in 1982 that looked at the Zeigarnik Effect as a motivation tool. In this study, participants worked on difficult puzzles, only to be told the study concluded halfway through solving the puzzle. In roughly 90% of instances, participants continued to work on the puzzle despite having no more obligation to do so, not even an external reward.

Thus, we understand the full extent of the Zeigarnik Effect. The mind appears to have a natural desire to see tasks to the end, and will motivate itself to complete those tasks, even if the reward for the task's completion isn't clear.

The mind doesn't like to leave things in an "open loop" state, where the resolution stays murky. We expect actions to resolve, meaning when there is no clear resolution, it creates a cognitive dissonance that eats away at your mind.

While it's easy to think that this dissonance is a negative feature of the mind, it serves a functional purpose. By creating this dissonance, your mind motivates itself to see tasks through to the end, meaning your mind can create the desire to close loops of work without requiring material reward each time.

In other words, the Zeigarnik Effect is a motivator that helps finish tasks even when it isn't clear that the reward will be worth the effort.

But, the Zeigarnik Effect, much like any other mental function, can cause some issues. Because your mind can better remember incomplete tasks, creating a mountain of unfinished tasks means that you load your mind to capacity with things you "ought" to do, pushing out tasks that might otherwise have higher priority, but can't fit into your conscious attention due to these distractions.

Research from Masicamp and Baumeister in 2011 showed this outcome to be the case. Research participants reflecting on incomplete tasks had their intrusive thoughts about other tasks creep into their mind while reading compared to those without such tasks waiting for them. Those intrusive thoughts kept those participants from keeping their focus on the reading material before them, reflecting the mental energy and toll needed to maintain memories and motivation for incomplete tasks in one's mind.

This seeming paradox of outcomes in the Zeigarnik Effect makes it easier to understand the frustrations and complexities for those trying to focus on tasks, especially in writers.

Writers working on large projects are especially susceptible to the negative outcomes of the Zeigarnik Effect. Creative work, especially projects like books or movie scripts, mean the creation and juggling of many different facets of narrative.

Drafts and revisions, subplots, character arcs, creative explorations...each one of these represents an incomplete task related to the larger whole of the project. As the project finishes when all these facets complete, there's potentially dozen of tasks being juggled within the project.

And each one represents a distraction if not contended with. Each one represents something that can push your mental load to its capacity, leading to the distraction outcomes so many writers complain about.

How many writers have you met (or perhaps have been yourself) that have all these ideas for their drafts, but end up scrolling social media instead of writing? How often have you thought of all the chores to do around the house, to then sit down and turn on the TV instead?

Most often, people will unconsciously choose a distraction over contending with this workload to prevent themselves from creating more unfinished work, thereby adding to the pile of other tasks that need more work.

The above gets even worse when you add multitasking to the equation. Gloria Mark conducted research in 2008 showing that the average person returns back to their original task in about 23 minutes after a distraction.

Meaning, if you distract yourself more than three times per hour, you lose out on the benefits of deep, focused work for a task before you, increasing the mental effort needed to complete the task.

In a world of social media and infinite entertainment via streaming services, it's no wonder writers and similar creatives have a hard time sitting down and focusing. Between the unfinished items left on their mental to-do list and the constant distractions at our fingertips, deep work appears impossible.

But it isn't. In fact, I believe the Zeigarnik Effect, one of the main culprits to this issue of focused work, can be harnessed to propel your work forward, rather than hold it back.

There are, in my experience, six strategies you can employ to leverage the productive power of the Zeigarnik Effect.

Sometimes the simplest things in life are the wisest approach you can take. Harnessing the Zeigarnik Effect is as simple as starting a task for five minutes.

This is due to the psychological tension the effect creates doesn't come from the duration of time spent on the work, but rather its unfinished nature. If you force yourself to start working, if even for a little bit, you'll find that your desire for a definitive resolution will overcome the lethargy of not working at all.

Refer back to McGraw's research from earlier. The participants in the experiment continued with their tasks despite having permission to leave and no clear reward for completion because their minds craved the conclusion of the task, and the understanding and satisfaction that it brings.

Writers can tap into this just as easily as McGraw's participants. Give yourself five minutes to delve into your work, setting a timer if needed. When that timer runs out, ask yourself: did I do enough to feel satisfied with my work for today?

99% of the time, your answer will be no. You'll hit the off switch on the timer and get back into your writing work.

Hours of commitment feels impossible when your energy and motivation isn't there. Five minutes is something anyone, including yourself, can do.

Specific, detailed plans eliminate the cognitive burdens associated with unfinished tasks. Masicampo and Baumeister's works make this conclusion clear, and therefore, afford writers working on long-term projects a means to reduce the mental load on their minds.

The key is specific, actionable answers to three questions about how you will approach your unfinished work:

Answering those questions gives your brain clarity on your intentions with your unfinished work, meaning it has less to worry about for the future. With increased clarity, comes reduced cognitive load.

The plus-up for this strategy is to write down your answers to those three questions, and leave those answers near where you want to work on your unfinished task(s). Doing so means you leave the effort of remembering what your plans for tomorrow will be, and you seed the place you want to work with the answers you'll need to get that work done.

Answering the above questions takes two, maybe three, minutes at most. If you could get a massive mental weight off your mind in two minutes, would that be worth it to you?

The Zeigarnik Effect applies to tasks of all shapes and sizes. It could be argued, as a result, that lumping work into one large project is therefore the best strategy to achieve your goals with that project, but that doesn't appear to be the case based on the research.

Large projects create open loops in your mind that can last weeks, months, or years. Without the ability to close the loop for that long, your mind runs itself ragged trying to parse through all the actions needed to finish a project of that magnitude.

And yet, books and other writing tasks that take months to finish get completed all the time. How?

By breaking down projects into smaller tasks. There's a project management concept called the 8/80 Rule that states that an individual task shouldn't take more than 8 to 80 hours to keep work packages clear and tenable. Something similar can be applied to writing projects.

Break your large projects down into clear, specific tasks that take no more than 30 to 120 minutes to finish. List these tasks out chronologically, and then complete those tasks in full before moving on to anything else further down the list.

Doing this does two things:

Thus, you achieve progress towards your main goals while creating stops along the way to maintain your drive forward.

Your working memory is limited, no matter how smart or competent you believe yourself to be. The vast majority of people cannot hold more than four to seven distinct pieces of information in their head at the same time. Thus, if you try to fill your memory with the work and steps you need to take to complete that work, you're setting yourself up for failure by forcing your memory to be full of things triggering the downsides of The Zeigarnik Effect.

This is where you can borrow ideas from the Getting Things Done methodology: capture everything you can in external memory. A trusted system using a notebook, a notes app, or similar software means that you outsource the burden of memory from your mind to another space, lightening your load.

...Assuming you review those notes regularly.

Leaving those notes by the wayside, never to be touched again, creates another opportunity for your working memory to torture you over things you wrote down, never to use again. To keep from mentally flagellating yourself, you'll need to go back into your notes from time-to-time (I recommend weekly), and review/prune your notes.

Keep what is actionable, discard what is done or useless. Then go do the actionable things.

This cycle of capture/review/complete will reduce the cognitive load on your mind, helping you focus.

Multitasking, that king of liars, doesn't save you anything. It wastes your time, and keeps you from entering deep work states, where effort flows. Gloria Mark's studies make it clear that switching activities faster than your mind needs to switch into deep work mode kills productive output, and your mental energy.

But, switching tasks seems like the best approach, especially when working on a large writing project. Several facets come together in this type of work, meaning you have to bounce from one to the other in order to keep all things balanced, right?

That appears true from a macroscopic perspective, but the Mark's research is clear all the same. It's best to focus on one task at a time with intent and clarity than to bounce all over.
Thus, each band of focus time you allocate should have a singular task at hand. All other potential distractions, from browser tabs of social media to other parts of your project, need to be closed or disregarded entirely for significant blocks of time.

Each time you set down to write, do these things:

The key here is to reduce the number of open loops your mind perceives, keeping the downsides of The Zeigarnik Effect at bay. Cutting out distractions and focusing on one, completable task at a time ensures your work looks like a series of closed loops rather than several open tasks requiring an indeterminant amount of time left to complete.

Few writing projects can be completed in a single sitting. Thus, the challenge is: how do you end your work for the day without creating the negativity associated with these open loops?

The answer: a closure ritual. Physical, identifiable habits you take at the end of each work period to signal to your mind that the work is done for the day. While this won't solve any lingering loops from unfinished work, it gives your mind the signal that work is done for now, and can be resumed later.

I covered part of this earlier when I suggested you write answers the when/where/how of your next day's work. But, this step goes a step beyond writing answers to a few questions.

Ideally, you should be able to put away all things associated with your work when you finish for the day. Close all related programs, turn off all needed devices, file away all the papers you have on your desk, put away everything you can to signal to your brain that work is done for the day.

As you put things away, summarize the work you did for the day. Note the number of words you wrote, the subtasks you completed during your work, and the benefit these completed tasks offer to the overall goal you aimed your work at that day.

By creating intentional goals for tomorrow while staying mindful of the completed tasks of the day, you keep yourself focused on the done and dusted, rather than the open and undefined of the future, and prevent open loops creeping back into your working memory.

The strategies listed above are great, but they represent building blocks for a unified system, not individual tools that can, independently, solve your productivity woes. Altogether, your personal, Zeigarnik-aware system wants the following facets:

The specific software or tools you use to participate in each step of the system doesn't matter. The addition of, or complete exclusion of, visual reminders doesn't matter. The usage of any electronic assistance at all in this system doesn't matter.

As long as it works for you, and your workflows, you can use any tool or software you want. I work best with lists and Pomodoro-inspired timeboxing, but others will prefer a Kanban board and weekly planning.

I don't advocate for specific tools. I advocate for intentional construction of systems and practices that get you working.

Because the above series of steps has clear, psychological basis and positive outcomes I've noticed in my own work, I recommend these steps in their entirety, and in the presented order.

The Zeigarnik Effect is a double-edged sword. It will cut into your mental energy as easily as it feeds into the mental pathways that lead towards the ideal flow state of work.

Everything here relates back to the idea of focused work and intentional planning. By freeing yourself of distractions, open loops, and other draws on your memory, you free up bandwidth to delve into the task at hand.

For better or worse, our minds operate much like computers. We only have so much processing power and memory we can give to a set of tasks. By going into your life and removing as many open programs (in this case, open loops of work) as possible, you free up resources that can go towards the work at hand.

So, the next time you fear that you can never focus on deep writing work, take some of this advice to heart. Create a system and a space that allows you to free your mind and immerse yourself in the creative endeavor you want to build.