Zeigarnik Effect: Get Closure!

Akrasia

If you can make one simple change to your day to day life which will help reduce anxiety and relieve stress and allow you to live your life better it's this.

Close off those loose ends in your life as early as you can. If you have unfinished tasks, complete them.

The Zeigarnik Effect is the name of the psychological mechanism that indicates how the brain manages your memory. There is an active form of memory (like RAM in a computer) which is dedicated to tasks that are still running, and there is the archive form of memory (like the hard drive of a computer) where past events are stored. The RAM form of memory has a much higher capacity for detail than the long term memory but it also requires much more cognitive resources. There is a limit to our concentration and when we approach this limit, it can lead to stress and anxiety.

Just as we can speed up a computer by shutting down tasks that we are no longer using, we can do the same to our brain.

Your brain wants you to complete tasks. If you have unfinished business, your brain will work away in the background thinking of ways to resolve this.

Procrastination can add to anxiety. When you are given a task, even a simple one, like replying to a text or email from a friend, if you send the reply straight away, your brain closes off this task and forgets about it from the 'RAM' part of your memory and archives it in your long term memory.

If you tell someone that you are going to do something, or if you have a task that is expected that you will complete, either do the task, or tell the person that you're not going to be able to do the task. Leaving it hanging in mid-air is going to cause stress.

If you don't complete a task straight away this task remains active in your brain, consumes resources and leads to anxiety. (the brain will interrupt you sporadically to remind you to send that text which will A, distract you from what you were doing, and B, flood you with guilt for not responding to your friend's request)

The second you respond to that text, or return the golf clubs you borrowed or call over to visit someone who you have been putting on the long finger, you will feel better.

If you feel life is getting you down, a nice exercise to undertake might be to do up a list of some of the unresolved business that can be easily rectified and just cross them off the list.

The quicker you resolve the tasks, the better. If you procrastinate further and set a time in the future for resolving your unfinished tasks, you're just adding another uncompleted task to the 'tasklist'

19543261

I assume at some point the procrastinated task is transferred out of the "active memory", and is then merely pointed to by a shortcut titled "all those things I still have to do".

I've procrastinated to such a point that all my immediate concerns arent immediate anymore unless I actively think of them.

Chet T16

19543261 wrote: »

I assume at some point the procrastinated task is transferred out of the "active memory", and is then merely pointed to by a shortcut titled "all those things I still have to do".

I've procrastinated to such a point that all my immediate concerns arent immediate anymore unless I actively think of them.

Thanks for the bump on this, i've been meaning to finish reading this thread :pac: