Zeigarnik

The Zeigarnik Effect is named after the Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. Kurt Lewin, Zeigarniks' professor, noticed that a waiter had better recollections of still unpaid orders. However, after the completion of the task – after everyone had paid – he was unable to remember any more details of the orders. Bluma Zeigarnik took up this finding and carried out individual experiments with 164 people. She found evidence that not-completed tasks are remembered almost twice as good as completed tasks. In psychology, the Zeigarnik Effect, also known as the Cliffhanger effect, states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.

The Cliffhanger effect refers to a style of novelists/authors who interrupt a story at an exciting or thrilling moment in order to capture the reader or audience. The Cliffhanger Effect is also used in advertising.

You can benefit from the effects mentioned above. You can deliberately think of your goals as unfinished tasks in order to motivate you to continue. The effect works particularly well if your can reach your goals in gradual stages. This way you may reach a greater excellence.

However, normally you will have too many unfinished tasks and goals. More than 5-7 unfinished tasks reduce your level of focus and often lead to a mental state called stress. Multi-tasking leads to less output and lower performance. To reduce the stress and to have high productivity and high performance, you can temporarily finish tasks by postponing them to a fixed date, or by putting them onto a TODO list. This approach is used in the time management method "Getting Things Done".