One of the most frequent things that modern people say is:
“Honestly, I hardly do anything, and still, I feel completely worn out.”
The plans don’t seem to be that packed, there is no huge physical effort, still, the mind looks like it is carrying something that cannot be seen, all day long.
The main reason for this is psychology’s a well known phenomenon called the Zeigarnik effect:
The tendency of a person’s mind to remember those things that have not been finished rather than those that have been completed.
Simply put, every task, every talk, every decision that is not done, is kept by the brain as an open tab of it.
What Is the Zeigarnik Effect?
Psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik first encountered this effect at a restaurant.
She watched that the waiters were very good at remembering the orders of tables whose bills had not been paid yet. When the bill was paid, they forgot the same orders within a few minutes.
Her lab experiments confirmed the observation:
People recall more frequently and more vividly the tasks in which they were interrupted than those which they have fully completed.
If there is anything that is not finished for the mind, this thing comes along with a warning sign:
“The subject under discussion is not closed yet.”
“You have to come back to this.”
“This drawer is still open.”
This mechanism, to be truthful, is quite functional from the point of view of organization and survival. The problem is that the era we live in is exceptionally good at the production of unending, unfinished tasks.
The Modern Human and the State of Constant “Half Done”
Nowadays, the Zeigarnik effect is no longer restricted to only work or study-related tasks. One’s whole life from morning to night consists of structures that make one feel as if one is constantly left halfway.
The examples are very familiar:
* The end of episode structure of streaming series:
Every episode finishes with the most dramatic moment; the mind is unable to close the story.
* Conversations started on social media that never truly continue:
Messages that are seen but not replied to, comments that don’t get a response.
* Never-ending to-do lists:
Unmarked items in the list each leave a tiny trace of guilt in the mind.
* Relationships without a clear definition:
Those connections that neither really end nor genuinely go on; people who are kept in a state of indefinite.
All of these things send a similar message to the nervous system:
“There is no area in life that is really closing. Everything is still pending.”
Thus, what at first glance looks like an ordinary day turns out to be a multitude of open tabs within.
Psychological Reflection: Mental Load and Constant Unease
At first, the Zeigarnik effect may look like a benefit. In fact it can:
* Support a project not to be forgotten,
* Prevent us from not finishing a conversation,
* Allow a goal to be reached with less effort.
The problem is that nowadays this mechanism may lead an overstimulated nervous system to follow us. The reasons for it are that:
* Completion of tasks is almost never felt,
* Replies to messages never feel as if they were done,
* The feeling of “I caught up” is substituted by the anxiety of “Something new can come up any minute.”
Not only that, but the brain also keeps every experience, question, and decision that it cannot resolve as an unfinished file. This manifests in:
* A somewhat disquieting feeling
* A persistent feeling “I forgot something”
* Feeling tired although the workload is not heavy
* The lack of the capability of total relaxation even when resting
Philosophical Perspective: The Human and Incompleteness
Philosophically, the human being may be considered as an unfinished one by nature. Life is a series of projects that cannot be completed, sentences that stay unfinished, questions that never get fully answered.
Quite logically, the Zeigarnik effect reflects this human condition of scientific incompleteness:
* One cannot always end a relationship with a clear, final sentence.
* A single book or theory is not sufficient to complete a worldview.
* The “self discovery” journey of a person is never completely done.
The biggest question here is:
“If a person cannot learn to make peace with incompleteness, will he/she spend the entire life under the shadow of ‘unfinished things’?”
Besides that, we moderns are not only pushed to greater productivity but also to leaving more things halfway. This results in the creation of an existential dilemma:
On one side there is the wish to close everything, while on the other there is the fact that life never really closes.
A Concrete Scene from Today: A Society of Open Tabs
Considering today’s city dweller, the presence of the Zeigarnik effect may be inferred from numerous minor situations, such as:
* Coming home exhausted after a long day, a person instead of taking a rest, mentally starts answering tomorrow’s work emails.
* A student even after the completion of the exam cannot detach himself from it: “Is it that I should have written that answer differently?”
* An employee, although he has quit the job, still vividly recalls the unfair situation of years ago and keeps reconstructing the sentence he could not say at that time.
What is the common denominator of these instances?
The time and place of the events have been changed, the person has exited the stage, but the mind has not yet finished its play.
The Solution: Is It to Finish Everything?
Obviously not.
Life, by its very nature, is a series of topics that one cannot fully close, nor is it necessary.
Yet one can certainly lessen the weight that rests on one’s brain by deliberately taking care of some of the “open tabs” that exist there:
1. Naming them:
Identifying an unfinished task, feeling or conversation can relieve the brain from its constant recalling chore.
Just being able to say “Yes, this is an open topic in my life right now” is already a move forward.
2. Making small completions:
It is not necessary to complete all the tasks, just a few small ones may actually be completed:
Sending a brief email, finishing a waiting micro-task, scheduling a postponed appointment…
When the brain undergoes the experience of completion, the general tension can be somewhat released.
3. Consciously letting go:
There are some files that seem to be never closing, but the fact may be this:
That topic has long since become irrelevant in the person’s life.
At that point, the choice “I will not follow this anymore” can be better for one’s health than keeping the file open for years.
4. Learning to live with uncertainty:
On a philosophical level human maturity is one of the stages to come and it involves accepting that
“Not everything must have a clear, final answer.”
This acceptance doesn’t get rid of the Zeigarnik effect, it just changes our relationship with it.
Awareness of the Mind’s Open Tabs
The Zeigarnik effect is a very insightful tool that helps realize the cause of mental fatigue in people of the modern age:
* It is not the closed files,
* But the unfinished ones that remain in mind the most and this is not only a cognitive tendency, but also a reflection of the spirit of our age.
Work, relationships, education, social media…
When feeling half done in every area piles up, the mind starts to see itself as a page that is constantly turning.
Maybe the most needed thing today is not even to close all the tabs,
but to choose which tabs we really want to keep open.
Because it is usually not life that really tires us, but the fact that we don’t know how much of it we are unnecessarily leaving open.