Ever wonder why that half-written email or uncompleted presentation keeps replaying in your mind? Psychologists call it the Zeigarnik effect – the brain’s tendency to cling to unfinished tasks, with surprising implications for focus, learning and mental health.
Ever found yourself simply unable to stop thinking about a task you left unfinished?
It could be that email you never finished, that deck you still need to polish, or even that text you left hanging. Sometimes it is as trivial as a video game level waiting to be conquered. Whatever it is, the fact that it remains incomplete keeps your brain hooked, circling back to it even when you are trying to relax or focus on something else.
But this isn’t just an example of rest guilt, or a sign of perfectionistic tendencies or a lack of focus.
Rather, this is the Zeigarnik effect at play, a phenomenon that many people experience, with profound implications on your productivity and mental health.
Understanding the Zeigarnik Effect
The Zeigarnik effect is our brain’s curious tendency for remembering incomplete or interrupted tasks better than completed ones.
It was named after Bluma Zeigarnik, a Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist, in the 1920s, who noticed how waiters could recall unpaid orders with great accuracy, yet forgot them once they were paid.
According to Dr Geraldine Tan, the director and principal psychologist of The Therapy Room, this effect serves as a protective mechanism in our everyday life.
“Let’s say you have a pot of water on the stove and you need to wait for it to boil before adding in the pasta. If you forget the water is boiling, it could be disastrous,” she illustrated in CNA.
“So sometimes, these thoughts linger because there’s an element of risk or consequence involved.”
However, not everything regarding the Zeigarnik effect has to that weighty. Think about a television drama ending on a cliffhanger or a novel that leaves you desperate for the sequel. Your brain seeks resolution – it wants closure, and it will not rest until it gets it.
When Incomplete Tasks Become Mental Clutter
Dramatic cliffhangers aside, the Zeigarnik effect is a demonstration of our brain’s natural efficiency. When a task is done, we let it go to free up mental capacity; but when we have a bunch of unfinished tasks, our minds continuously run through them.
It is this latter aspect that can make this effect a boon to our productivity.
It helps keep us conscious and focused on our goals. When we’re urged to remember a task, it encourages us to make a detailed plan for it and bring it to fruition.
However, things don’t always work out this way.
“It’s useful, but only as long as you act on it,” cautioned Dr Tan. “If you don’t, the weight compounds. The effect lingers in the background, draining your energy.”
Ironically, when an unfinished task is ringing alarm bells in our minds, it can take focus away from another unfinished task we’re currently doing. And having more of them means that we’re using up a lot of mental resources to keep track of them.
Moreover, this effect doesn’t just touch on short-term tasks – it can also cause unaccomplished long-term goals to circulate in our brains for years.
When we’re ruminating that much, it can disrupt our leisure time and even our sleep as we find it more challenging to relax, thus impairing rest and recovery.
Furthermore, these intrusive thoughts can sometimes force us to push ourselves in an attempt to resolve the cognitive tension. This heightens our stress and anxiety, and can even go as far as leading to burnout.
Taking the Zeigarnik Effect Positively
Despite its potential adverse impacts to our psyche, we can’t deny that with the Zeigarnik effect, we gain a deeper insight into how our minds manage memory, attention and emotion.
So if we want to take advantage of it, the key is to tap into it as an effective approach for enhancing our life and mental health.
Helping Us Lock In Information
As proven by Zeigarnik’s waiters, the Zeigarnik effect can be an incredible stimulus on our memory – but it also causes us to forget things after our brain is done with it.
So when we’re learning something new, we can make the best of this effect by studying or picking up information piece by piece.
As an example, let’s say you want to do well for an exam. Cramming everything days before you take it can be something you’re used to, but it’s an instinct that may not serve you well. In contrast, incremental learning – for instance, purposeful interruptions to your studying sessions – can push details of what you’re reviewing to the forefront of your memory.
By leaving some concepts unfinished on purpose; your brain will keep them “active” until you return, reinforcing memory.
Kickstart Productivity
The Zeigarnik effect can be employed to overcome procrastination – if you use it the right way.
If you’ve been pondering over a project, but haven’t even started on it yet, start anywhere. Write the first line of that report, or outline the first slide. Once begun, the Zeigarnik effect takes over, nudging your mind towards closure. The discomfort of incompleteness can become the push that keeps you going.
Improving Our Mental Wellbeing
This may seem incongruous given our discussion above – but it’s true that we get a big boost to our self-esteem when we finish a task.
So let the haunting memory of incomplete tasks be leveraged for motivation instead.
Just be sure not to let it stress you out.
At the end of the day, it’s okay to allow ourselves to live with a little unfinished business. Remember, it’s simply our brains’ way of doing their best to assist us in completing the story.
External References
- Cherry, K. (2025, September 5). The Zeigarnik Effect and Memory. Verywell Mind. Retrieved from: https://www.verywellmind.com/zeigarnik-effect-memory-overview-4175150
- McMenamin, K. (2022, September 19). How the Little-Known Zeigarnik Effect Impacts Everyone Daily. Psychology Today. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/sg/blog/natural-order/202209/how-the-little-known-zeigarnik-effect-impacts-everyone-daily
- Psychology Today Staff. (n.d.). Zeigarnik Effect. Psychology Today. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/sg/basics/zeigarnik-effect
- Syrek, C. J., Weigelt, O., Peifer, C., & Antoni, C. H. (2017). Zeigarnik’s sleepless nights: How unfinished tasks at the end of the week impair employee sleep on the weekend through rumination. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(2), 225–238. Retrieved from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27101340/
- Wilks, C. (2024, May 17). The Real Reason Why You May Get Overwhelmed. Psychology Today. Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/sg/blog/human-flourishing-101/202404/why-you-feel-overwhelmed-the-zeigarnik-effect
- Wright, S. A. (2021, October 29). How to Use the Zeigarnik Effect to Boost Mental Heath. PsychCentral. Retrieved from: https://psychcentral.com/health/zeigarnik-effect
- Yeap, A. (2025, May 30). Why your brain can’t let go of unfinished tasks, even something as minor as a half-written email. CNA. Retrieved from: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/today/adulting/unfinished-tasks-weigh-mind-zeigarnik-5146056
