10 ms·

The Zeigarnik Effect

122 points by zawaideh 13y ago

RTigger 13y ago
Related, I like to leave non-working code or tests at the end of a day so I can easily find where I left off. For some reason when I try to build / test and the errors pop up I'm able to immediately pick up where I left off. A combination of a bookmark and the Zeigarnik Effect I guess?
jhund 13y ago
What the article doesn't mention is to use this effect as a tactic to get going in the morning: Plan your day so that you stop in the middle of an interesting task at the end of the day. I find it's effortless for me to pick it up the next morning.
- alinavrabie 13y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this helpful tip!
- JacobJans 13y ago
  I used this technique for my lunch break -- with great results. Before I took the break, I was very motivated to finish the project I was working on. But I decided to leave it unfinished. After lunch, I started right back again without 'lost time' checking my email and such.
wpietri 13y ago
Given that the site is so engineered to make me click, share, and otherwise engage, I have a hard time trusting the content. Is it written for accuracy? Or for virality?
- alinavrabie 13y ago
  Hi there, I can assure you that a lot of research went into this article.
  - GrinningFool 13y ago
    Well, I'm reassured... Reading through this and a couple of other articles (presumably yours)... yes, I see that research was done; but that it was largely superficial, summarizing marginally interesting content from a few different sources. As GP noted, it seems more focused on link-garnering than providing in-depth information. </brutal-truth>
    - 31reasons 13y ago
      Primarily because she is hired to write a blog which is intended to improve SEO and market their product to the right audience.
  - wpietri 13y ago
    Hi, Alina. This is not a dig on your work, but mainly a comment about the site. Sure, I believe you did a lot of research. But then the article could have been written to maximize accuracy or to maximize virality. I write a lot, and there's a big difference between the styles. For some topics, that can translate into a big difference in the content of an article. Productivity is definitely prone to that. There's a whole genre known as "productivity porn", so called because some people feel compelled to look at it far beyond actual utility. Right from the title of the article, I was put on guard. The word "unlock" indicates minor action will bring great improvement, freeing me from possibly-unsuspected constraints. Who wouldn't want that? Then we get three awesome, hard-to-reach states in a row. Next a mysterious sciencey-sounding effect named after somebody I've never heard of but who has an intriguing name. It's a perfect productivity porn title. When I clicked through, my skepticism was increased. On my phone, the first thing I saw was a bunch of share buttons with some needy, manipulative copy to get me to click them. There's a big stock photo of a pretty woman that conveys zero actual information. There were a modest number of short, upbeat paragraphs broken up with large titles. There are what I'm sure were links to other productivity articles in the body. There's relatively little subtlety, and a concluding paragraph that dubiously hates on the 8-hour work day. Then we get a paragraph trolling for comments, which increase stickiness. And then more share buttons with the same manipulative copy. I understand that this is a popular way to build a profitable content business these days. But I also understand that "profitable content business" and "reliable source of high-integrity, low-drama journalism" are poorly correlated. No matter how solid your writing and how true your heart, the context and the constraints of written-for-virality prose make me skeptical. Too many other people writing for similar sites and with similar structures have written excessively upbeat, low-thought articles for me to trust ones on this site without doing a lot more due diligence than I normally will for a quick morning read.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- swalsh 13y ago
  I was going to mention this, the site engaged me really quickly. There are 4 tabs open currently... which is rare for me. Except I took a different take away, if they were intelligent enough to use their advice for their own practical matters, their advice must have some relevancy to it.
aaronetz 13y ago
I definitely notice that effect personally. The problem is, I often find myself easily distracted (e.g. opening HN!) when faced with a hard problem or a "mental wall". It really hinders my ability to finish tasks sometimes. What do you do to help you focus on tasks, specifically hard ones?
- JacobJans 13y ago
  There are a number of things you can do to stay focused and on task. Some of them you probably already do. The first is to simply have a clearly defined goal. While this is obvious, it is also easy to miss. If we don't have a clearly defined task, we don't know whether or not we've completed it. But even if you have a clearly defined goal, it can still be easy to get distracted. There are two primary reasons for this. The first: If you don't know what the next step is, it can be difficult to stay focused. The next time you get stuck, ask yourself how clearly you know what your next step is. If you're not sure what to do, then make sure you spend the time figuring that out. But what if you have a clear goal, and you know exactly what you need to do, but you're still not staying focused? Then you've probably got a motivation problem. The way to deal with this is pretty straight forward. Simply spend time thinking about the reasons it is important to complete the task, or achieve the goal. Don't try to trick yourself here. Be honest. If you can't find any good enough reasons to stay focused, then maybe you should be doing something else. In summary: Have a clearly defined goal. Make sure you know exactly what you're next step is. And make sure you have the proper motivation. If you're interested in this stuff, I recommend reading about the "mental contrasting" technique, as well as the book "Succeed" by Heidi Grant Halvorson.
hengheng 13y ago
For those who understand German, you can read it up on wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik-Effekt http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik-Effekt
natural219 13y ago
Another interesting way to interpret this is that perhaps the Zeigarnik effect is a good description of the "psychological" cost of unpaid technical debt. For instance, during any project at my job I run into at least 5 things -- bugs, code improvements, components I could build to make this task easier -- and I jot them down. When I finish, I move on to the next feature, and that list grows to 10, then 15, then 30... the anxiety that "man I really need to fix this shitty codebase" actually affects me psychologically in tangible ways, and IMO is one of the under-talked about aspects of ignoring technical and design debt.
mistercow 13y ago
>The waiters seemed to remember complex orders that allowed them to deliver the right combination of food to the tables, yet the information vanished as the food was delivered. That could use some elaboration. If she was just watching them, how did she know the information vanished?
munificent 13y ago
Great article, except for the last paragraph. The duration that you work has little to do with your reward structure. If you had a one hour workday, at any time of your choosing, but were then paid cash afterwards, you'd still nullify the effect. If anything, I think the effect is an indictment of hourly wages, as opposed to salary or some other outcome-based compensation.
- alinavrabie 13y ago
  Great observation! It's not about the duration of the 8-hour work day though, but the concept of it. It's about doing something for a specific amount of time and then receiving a pre-established monetary reward. You're right, it could be a one-hour or five-hour workday. It just happens that in our days it's an 8-hour workday/40-hr. work-week.
- JosephBrown 13y ago
  Unless you consider getting to go home after 8 hours the reward.
sp332 13y ago
This probably explains "earworms" (songs that get stuck in your head) as well. Usually the hook that repeats doesn't have a musical resolution, and/or you can't remember how the song ends. Just hearing or imagining a single chord that sounds final can help get rid of them.
- zawaideh 13y ago
  I haven't thought of this; maybe that's why I get annoyed when a song I'm listening to gets interrupted.
wil421 13y ago
I waited tables the whole time I was in college and I can say that these observations are 100% true. Sometimes I even have nightmares about bad experiences I had.
tvladeck 13y ago
This effect is also a good reason to let the other side talk themselves out during a contentious discussion (instead of objecting to every point).
- alinavrabie 13y ago
  Great insight! I wouldn't have thought about it this way, although I can think of quite a few instances where this approach would have been more than helpful!
AsymetricCom 13y ago
This is just another word for stored state for humans!

122 points by zawaideh 13y ago

Related, I like to leave non-working code or tests at the end of a day so I can easily find where I left off. For some reason when I try to build / test and the errors pop up I'm able to immediately pick up where I left off. A combination of a bookmark and the Zeigarnik Effect I guess?

jhund 13y ago

What the article doesn't mention is to use this effect as a tactic to get going in the morning: Plan your day so that you stop in the middle of an interesting task at the end of the day. I find it's effortless for me to pick it up the next morning.

alinavrabie 13y ago
Thanks for mentioning this helpful tip!
JacobJans 13y ago
I used this technique for my lunch break -- with great results. Before I took the break, I was very motivated to finish the project I was working on. But I decided to leave it unfinished. After lunch, I started right back again without 'lost time' checking my email and such.

wpietri 13y ago

Given that the site is so engineered to make me click, share, and otherwise engage, I have a hard time trusting the content. Is it written for accuracy? Or for virality?

alinavrabie 13y ago
Hi there, I can assure you that a lot of research went into this article.
- GrinningFool 13y ago
  Well, I'm reassured... Reading through this and a couple of other articles (presumably yours)... yes, I see that research was done; but that it was largely superficial, summarizing marginally interesting content from a few different sources. As GP noted, it seems more focused on link-garnering than providing in-depth information. </brutal-truth>
  - 31reasons 13y ago
    Primarily because she is hired to write a blog which is intended to improve SEO and market their product to the right audience.
- wpietri 13y ago
  Hi, Alina. This is not a dig on your work, but mainly a comment about the site. Sure, I believe you did a lot of research. But then the article could have been written to maximize accuracy or to maximize virality. I write a lot, and there's a big difference between the styles. For some topics, that can translate into a big difference in the content of an article. Productivity is definitely prone to that. There's a whole genre known as "productivity porn", so called because some people feel compelled to look at it far beyond actual utility. Right from the title of the article, I was put on guard. The word "unlock" indicates minor action will bring great improvement, freeing me from possibly-unsuspected constraints. Who wouldn't want that? Then we get three awesome, hard-to-reach states in a row. Next a mysterious sciencey-sounding effect named after somebody I've never heard of but who has an intriguing name. It's a perfect productivity porn title. When I clicked through, my skepticism was increased. On my phone, the first thing I saw was a bunch of share buttons with some needy, manipulative copy to get me to click them. There's a big stock photo of a pretty woman that conveys zero actual information. There were a modest number of short, upbeat paragraphs broken up with large titles. There are what I'm sure were links to other productivity articles in the body. There's relatively little subtlety, and a concluding paragraph that dubiously hates on the 8-hour work day. Then we get a paragraph trolling for comments, which increase stickiness. And then more share buttons with the same manipulative copy. I understand that this is a popular way to build a profitable content business these days. But I also understand that "profitable content business" and "reliable source of high-integrity, low-drama journalism" are poorly correlated. No matter how solid your writing and how true your heart, the context and the constraints of written-for-virality prose make me skeptical. Too many other people writing for similar sites and with similar structures have written excessively upbeat, low-thought articles for me to trust ones on this site without doing a lot more due diligence than I normally will for a quick morning read.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
swalsh 13y ago
I was going to mention this, the site engaged me really quickly. There are 4 tabs open currently... which is rare for me. Except I took a different take away, if they were intelligent enough to use their advice for their own practical matters, their advice must have some relevancy to it.

aaronetz 13y ago

I definitely notice that effect personally. The problem is, I often find myself easily distracted (e.g. opening HN!) when faced with a hard problem or a "mental wall". It really hinders my ability to finish tasks sometimes. What do you do to help you focus on tasks, specifically hard ones?

JacobJans 13y ago
There are a number of things you can do to stay focused and on task. Some of them you probably already do. The first is to simply have a clearly defined goal. While this is obvious, it is also easy to miss. If we don't have a clearly defined task, we don't know whether or not we've completed it. But even if you have a clearly defined goal, it can still be easy to get distracted. There are two primary reasons for this. The first: If you don't know what the next step is, it can be difficult to stay focused. The next time you get stuck, ask yourself how clearly you know what your next step is. If you're not sure what to do, then make sure you spend the time figuring that out. But what if you have a clear goal, and you know exactly what you need to do, but you're still not staying focused? Then you've probably got a motivation problem. The way to deal with this is pretty straight forward. Simply spend time thinking about the reasons it is important to complete the task, or achieve the goal. Don't try to trick yourself here. Be honest. If you can't find any good enough reasons to stay focused, then maybe you should be doing something else. In summary: Have a clearly defined goal. Make sure you know exactly what you're next step is. And make sure you have the proper motivation. If you're interested in this stuff, I recommend reading about the "mental contrasting" technique, as well as the book "Succeed" by Heidi Grant Halvorson.

hengheng 13y ago

For those who understand German, you can read it up on wikipedia: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik-Effekt http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik-Effekt

natural219 13y ago

Another interesting way to interpret this is that perhaps the Zeigarnik effect is a good description of the "psychological" cost of unpaid technical debt. For instance, during any project at my job I run into at least 5 things -- bugs, code improvements, components I could build to make this task easier -- and I jot them down. When I finish, I move on to the next feature, and that list grows to 10, then 15, then 30... the anxiety that "man I really need to fix this shitty codebase" actually affects me psychologically in tangible ways, and IMO is one of the under-talked about aspects of ignoring technical and design debt.

mistercow 13y ago

>The waiters seemed to remember complex orders that allowed them to deliver the right combination of food to the tables, yet the information vanished as the food was delivered. That could use some elaboration. If she was just watching them, how did she know the information vanished?

munificent 13y ago

Great article, except for the last paragraph. The duration that you work has little to do with your reward structure. If you had a one hour workday, at any time of your choosing, but were then paid cash afterwards, you'd still nullify the effect. If anything, I think the effect is an indictment of hourly wages, as opposed to salary or some other outcome-based compensation.

alinavrabie 13y ago
Great observation! It's not about the duration of the 8-hour work day though, but the concept of it. It's about doing something for a specific amount of time and then receiving a pre-established monetary reward. You're right, it could be a one-hour or five-hour workday. It just happens that in our days it's an 8-hour workday/40-hr. work-week.
JosephBrown 13y ago
Unless you consider getting to go home after 8 hours the reward.

sp332 13y ago

This probably explains "earworms" (songs that get stuck in your head) as well. Usually the hook that repeats doesn't have a musical resolution, and/or you can't remember how the song ends. Just hearing or imagining a single chord that sounds final can help get rid of them.

zawaideh 13y ago
I haven't thought of this; maybe that's why I get annoyed when a song I'm listening to gets interrupted.

wil421 13y ago

I waited tables the whole time I was in college and I can say that these observations are 100% true. Sometimes I even have nightmares about bad experiences I had.

tvladeck 13y ago

This effect is also a good reason to let the other side talk themselves out during a contentious discussion (instead of objecting to every point).

alinavrabie 13y ago
Great insight! I wouldn't have thought about it this way, although I can think of quite a few instances where this approach would have been more than helpful!

AsymetricCom 13y ago

This is just another word for stored state for humans!