The next mechanism I want to describe is the Zeigarnik effect. It was discovered and described by Bluma Zeigarnik in 1927. Let me start with a short anecdote about it.

Waiters remember the people who haven’t settled the bill better than those who have paid. And the moment a customer pays, the waiter forgets them. Zeigarnik’s actual studies looked a little different - the café story is the founding legend of this research, not its result. What mattered was this: the unfinished stays active in the head. Ernest Hemingway reportedly had a habit of breaking off his writing at a point where he knew what came next, so that the following day he could return and keep writing “on the wave”. That one is a literary anecdote too, not data - but it captures the mechanism well.

There is much more to it - the Zeigarnik effect can be both a curse and a rescue. Why?

The curse

Rumination, intrusive thoughts, tormenting yourself, the “what if I had…” questions - sound familiar? They share a common root: they don’t end, they come back, they wear you down. These are open, “unfinished” matters in our heads. And there is no answer to them - that follows from their open construction. The answer is to return to the body, to something we are doing, even if that something is lying down. The sooner the better. The fragile homeostasis, if we have any at all in a crisis, is destroyed within seconds when we are left alone with these thoughts. I described the basic technique for handling this in my piece “NOTE” .

Rumination, self-torment, worry

This calls for a separate section. Although each mechanism is described separately, my assumption is this: here both the Zeigarnik effect and the white bear effect are at work. That is why rumination, self-torment and worry are so hard to handle. The open loop - the Zeigarnik effect - can be amplified by the fact that we try not to think about it: we suppress the thoughts, and the rebound effect kicks in.

The rescue

We can also use this mechanism to our advantage. When memories flood in - and this matters - memories and thoughts that are not “what ifs” or rumination, we can create a grief window. The setup is simple: we plan that today at, say, 7 p.m. we will allow ourselves to feel those thoughts. With rumination and “what ifs” this won’t work - those are open constructions, and there what helps is mainly a return to the body. Why does it work?

Research by Masicampo and Baumeister shows that merely making a plan works on the mind like closure - and that is what breaks the loop.

In short

  • Rumination, self-torment, worry → return to the body
  • Memories, facts → a grief window
  • If that doesn’t work → return to the body

Bibliography

Zeigarnik, B. (1927). Über das Behalten von erledigten und unerledigten Handlungen. Psychologische Forschung, 9, 1-85.

Masicampo, E. J., Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667-683.