🔧 Mind The Gap: Harnessing Our Brain’s Superpower To Enhance Focus, Memory, and Motivation

What a famous American novelist and an unknown Lithuanian psychologist can teach us about how the mind operates.

Photo by Troy Guo

IoNTELLIGENCE draws on science and strategy to help busy people achieve professional success, personal transformation, and lasting happiness in five minutes a week.

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🏆 Goal: Provide a neuroscience-backed strategy for greater creativity, productivity, and mental clarity.

📈 Topics: Mental Fitness | Neuroscience | Evolutionary Psychology

Have you ever dined at a restaurant with several friends, where a show-off waiter takes all your orders without writing anything down but delivers them flawlessly?

It turns out that these servers don’t necessarily have exceptional memories. This party trick is possible thanks to a quirk in our cognitive wiring. Almost a century ago, a Lithuanian psychologist discovered that we remember unfinished tasks better than completed ones. Why? The human brain hates open loops.

This thinking trap is helpful for waiters but harmful to our mental well-being. It also has implications for everything from what we remember to our ability to stay focused and even our relationship with regret and uncertainty.

📈 How It Works: The Zeigarnik Effect and its Implications

Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik conducted a famous experiment in 1927 where she observed that waiters could better remember complex orders when they were incomplete. However, they forgot them as soon as the order was delivered.

Her research, known as the Zeigarnik Effect, demonstrates that our brain hates unfinished business so much that it will hold onto information until it is resolved.

From an evolutionary perspective, unresolved situations could signal potential threats or unmet needs, prompting our brains to keep these issues in mind until they are addressed.

This cognitive bias has consequences far beyond the restaurant memory flex. For example, this phenomenon is at the heart of how you plow through your To-Do List. The brain is hardwired to resolve cognitive tension. When you commit to a task, you’re opening a loop your brain longs to close.

It’s also why you respond to a co-worker’s Slack message instead of advancing that seemingly less urgent (but more important) strategic project: the note is figuratively screaming at your brain to address it.

This predisposition even contributes to a quirk in our sense of regret. Have you ever noticed how we lament the things we didn’t do more than the ones we did? The road not taken is, by definition, incomplete, so the memory of that unchosen path lingers longer.

Finally, this evolutionary trait is also why we yearn for certainty. To our Stone Age brains, the future is an infinite series of open loops: How will my kids do in school this year? Will I get that promotion? Do I have enough money saved to retire? The insurance industry, among others, preys on our desire for peace of mind by taking some of that uncertainty off our minds (for a premium, of course).

Our brain craves closure. It’s one of our most potent mental patterns, impacting every aspect of our lives. But we can learn to harness its power for more positive outcomes.

🧠 The Novel Idea: The Hemingway Trick

Ernest Hemingway’s favorite productivity technique was to conclude a writing session right in the middle of a sentence. He always found that getting started was his biggest challenge, so creating a sense of incompletion in that particular way helped him begin each following day with immediate momentum.

Here are some methods to tap into this technique for greater creativity, productivity, and mental clarity.

🔎 The IoNTELLIGENCE Top 5®️ Ways To Harness The Zeigarnik Effect

1. Close open loops to free your mind. GTD guru David Allen is fond of saying, “The mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” There is a corollary to that insight: it’s harder to be creative if your brain is clogged with things you’re supposed to remember. Use a notepad or a To-Do List to capture all those errands you need to complete, and your mental RAM will clear up for creativity.
2. End your workday “in the middle” and leave breadcrumbs. When working on an extended project, end the day halfway through a task with a clear next step. It will boost your motivation, and the “breadcrumbs” you left will lead you back to where you left off for a quick start the following morning.
3. Act like a TV writer and create “cliffhangers” in your communication. You’ll engage people’s curiosity by creating a bit of suspense. Instead of ending an email with “Let me know if you’re interested,” say, “There’s one more idea I’ve been saving for our next chat-I think you’ll love it. Let’s discuss it on Thursday.”
4. Schedule a time to worry. The Zeigarnik Effect means that a source of anxiety will stay on your mind unless you deal with it. Here’s a trick I learned to change that. Plan an hour and date in the next week when you will address what’s worrying you and put it in your calendar. Doing this temporarily closes the loop and restores your focus. “I don’t have time to get distracted by this. I will tackle my 2025 taxes on Saturday at 4 pm.”
5. Start before you’re ready. Begin working on tasks even if you don’t have all the answers, and exploit the Zeigarnik Effect to drive you toward completion. Giving a big speech in two months? Begin brainstorming now, and let the mind push ideas your way.

🚨 If You Only Do One Thing From This List

End in the middle and leave breadcrumbs. This trick helped me finish writing my book ten years ago, and it’s the best advice I give first-time writers.

The IoNTELLIGENCE Top 5®️ Ways To Harness The Zeigarnik Effect: Close open loops to free your mind. End your workday “in the middle” and leave breadcrumbs. Act like a TV writer and create “cliffhangers.” Schedule a time to worry. Start before you’re ready. IoNTELLIGENCE by Ion Valis. I’m a strategic advisor and performance coach to entrepreneurs and executives. To learn more about my work, visit my website and connect with me on LinkedIn.

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IoNTELLIGENCE by Ion Valis. I’m a strategic advisor and performance coach to entrepreneurs and executives. To learn more about my work, visit my website and connect with me on LinkedIn.

Originally published at https://iontelligence.substack.com.