I feel great today. Better than great, I feel happy. No more Zeigarniks for me.
You may wonder the source of this elation?
I had a day off today during which I was able to finish several jobs that I’ve been putting aside for months, which considering what was involved is ridiculous.
One of the major wins was clearing a part of my back garden so now I can get on with preparing a new base for my shed. Yes, a shed, I will explain.
Garden gets cleared, shed gets built, garage gets emptied into shed, garage is restored into a music studio and office. Ah, there’s the source - being a step closer to regaining a creative workspace.
It’s not like I’ve been totally beating myself up about it, the reasons have been valid - storing the kids stuff and all the new camping gear we’ve bought to have more interactive (cheaper) family holidays - but it has been playing on my mind.
There’s just so much that I want to get on with creatively that it’s starting to become a real frustration. Zeigarnik again!
So, by now you may be wondering what this Zeigarnik thing I keep mentioning is? Well, the Zeigarnik effect is that frustration and annoyance of having unfinished business, an unclosed loop if you will.
Bluma Zeigarnik (9th Nov 1900 − 24th Feb 1988) was a student of Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin and she completed, in 1927, a study of the effect that unfinished tasks can have on the mind.
The story, which is told several ways depending on where you look, is that she was sitting in a coffee house in Vienna taking notice of the waiters. What she noticed was that the waiters seemed to have a greater capacity to remember what people had ordered when the bill was yet to be paid than when the transaction had completed. The human condition quite simply has real problems with unfinished business.
This has implications for all of us and can be applied in interesting ways - for example when learning something new it can help to put the book down before the end of a chapter to keep your interest going.
For the purpose of this post I recommend attacking your ‘things to be done’ list, which if you’re being honest is probably nowhere near as long as the list in your head. You’ll feel so much better for it.
I do, but then hey, I’m getting a new shed
.
Some kind of bass thing!: 
