Zeigarnik-Effect

It’s 2 AM. You tell yourself “just one more episode” for the third time tonight. The show ended on a cliffhanger, and your brain refuses to let you sleep until you know what happens next. Or maybe you’re at work, supposedly focused on a spreadsheet, but part of your brain is still churning over that unfinished novel you put down this morning. Why do unfinished stories occupy so much mental real estate? The answer lies in a phenomenon discovered in a 1920s Berlin restaurant-and it might be the most powerful tool in a storyteller’s arsenal. ...

It’s 2 AM. I should be sleeping. Instead, I’m lying in bed thinking about that bug I almost fixed. I know exactly where the problem is. I know how to solve it. I just ran out of time. My brain won’t let it go. Or that blog post I started writing three days ago. I have the outline. I wrote the intro. But I haven’t finished it, and it’s nagging at me every time I sit down to work. ...