Ever heard of the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe?

In the gruesome horror story, written in 1843, the narrator murders an old man and buries him beneath the floorboards.

(You can check out the very short story here.)

But it’s not over…

Because he keeps hearing the sound of the dead man’s heartbeat thumping underneath his feet.

It drives him steadily mad… to the point where he confesses his crime to the police.

Well, this is how I feel about unfinished projects.

For example, the idea for a novel that I wrote and then shoved in a drawer… or the collage of photographs I started work on before getting distracted… or the guitar practice I never continued.

These things haunt me like the Tell-Tale Heart.

Even if they’re hidden in a filing cabinet, or stored somewhere in my hard drive, they emanate this weird guilty energy that nags away at my mind.

It’s a common characteristic of unfinished things…

They are weirdly NOISY.

Sure, it’s often a background noise in the depths of your mind, but it can be a torment, even if you’re not consciously aware of it.

This is something known as the Zeigarnik Effect – and while I’ve just described the dark side of it, there is a way to harness it and USE it to become more productive.

Let’s take a look….

The Secret Discovered in a Berlin Restaurant

In the 1920s, a Lithuanian psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik sat in a busy Berlin restaurant.

She was curious about why the waiters seemed to remember incomplete tabs better than those that had been paid for.

A settled bill quickly slipped out of their memories, while an unpaid one nagged away at them, and wouldn’t let them forget.

So Zeigarnik decided to test this hypothesis in a report titled “On Finished and Unfinished Tasks”, which she published in 1927.

Each participant had to complete a series of tasks, like solving a puzzle or assembling a flat-pack box.

During half the tasks, the subjects were interrupted by researchers… and during the other half, they were allowed to get on with it.

When Zeigarnik asked them to recall details of each task, test subjects could remember the interrupted tasks around 90% more accurately.

Her study suggested that our desire to finish a task stores it in our memory until it has been completed.

This is why that incomplete project can torment us like the beating of an invisible heart.

You might have experienced this yourself…

That business plan you began working on…. that course where you only did the first few modules… that eBook or course you started planning out…

These can plague you with guilt or feelings of failure.

So the downside of the Zeigarnik Effect is that it can cause continual low level mental stress and anxiety.

But there is a way to turn that around and actually USE this effect in a positive way.

How to Turn the Zeigarnik Effect into Brain Fuel

You might not remember this, but last year I wrote to you about the power of using ‘open loops’ when you’re creating marketing material or online content.

An open loop is where you give a reader, listener, or viewer the BEGINNING of a story, without resolving it.

They become compelled to keep reading, listening, and watching to the end, because they want to close the loop again.

That’s an example of the Zeigarnik Effect in action as a tool of engagement and persuasion.

But you can also use it on yourself as a productivity trick.

The act of starting a task can ‘open a loop’ where you create a nagging tension that won’t go away until it’s resolved and you can close the loop – ie. finishing what you started.

For example, you might…

• Write one paragraph of an article
• Get Chat GPT to create you a deep research report
• Sketch out an eBook, chapter by chapter
• Start watching the first video in a training course…

It might only be 5-10 minutes of work…

But the act of starting flips a mental switch that keeps the task active in the background of your mind.

The tension will build quietly until you feel compelled to return and finish courses.

In essence, the Zeigarnik Effect becomes a form of ‘brain fuel’, where you light the fire and get the energy going, driving you forwards to a big goal.

However, this isn’t some guaranteed productivity switch that flips the moment you dabble in something.

If that were true, then none of us would have half-written books, incomplete courses and abandoned business ideas scattered all over the place!

4 Steps for Using the Zeigarnik Effect

The key is to be mindful about the Zeigarnik Effect, rather than using it as an excuse to start any old project, assuming that its magic will kick in automatically.

Otherwise you’ll end up with lots of guilt but no tangible results!

Instead, the trick is to use the effect strategically.

Here’s how to do it:

• Choose one high-priority project. Think about something that you have been meaning to start (or finish) but never quite got round to it.
• Start small with an achievable task. Set a timer for 20 minutes and tackle just one element. It could be a paragraph. One course video. One blog post.
• Leave yourself a ‘to do’ note that highlights the next step, so your brain knows exactly how to pick up where it left off.
• Don’t aim to finish it all in one sitting. Just start it, then let your subconscious become the nagging motivational driver to come back to it again tomorrow.

When it comes down to it, this is really about taking action to get something started – opening the loop of your own personal success story, so that you are more driven to close it again.

So if you get 5 minutes today, have a think about the projects you’ve started, or been meaning to start.

What could you do to open the loop?

And if you’re struggling to pick something, then let me know what your unfinished projects are!

Perhaps there is something I could help you resurrect and reactivate!

Just send me an email and I’ll take a look.