History hasn’t been kind to women.

We tend to get overlooked or written out of the story!

In the 19th Century, Ada Lovelace, wrote the first algorithm for a machine, now considered the first computer program.

That same century, amateur palaeontologist Mary Anning discovered important Jurassic dinosaur fossils…

Later, Hedy Lamarr co-invented ‘frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology’, which became the foundation for Wi-Fi!

Yet these women didn’t become household names at the time.

Credit was either given to men, or they published under male names.

Even today, a lot of women seem to shy away from sharing what they know because they feel like imposters, or somehow unworthy.

It’s one of the reasons I started my Course Creation Academy, so that more women were encouraged to step up and be heard.

Anyway, I’m fascinated by stories of unsung female heroes and influencers from history.

Like this one…

The Woman Who Discovered a Key Motivational Secret

In the 1920s a young Lithuanian psychologist named Bluma Zeigarnik was in Berlin, studying her PHD.

She was sat one day in a busy Berlin restaurant, carefully observing the staff.

As a psychologist, she was curious about why the waiters seemed to remember incomplete tabs better than those that had been paid for.

While a settled bill quickly slipped out of their memories… an unpaid one nagged away at their minds as they went about their business.

So Zeigarnik decided to test this hypothesis in a scientific study.

Each participant had to complete a series of tasks, like solving a puzzle or assembling a flat-pack box.

During half the tasks, the subjects were interrupted by researchers… and during the other half, they were allowed to get on with it.

When Zeigarnik asked them to recall details of each task, test subjects could remember the interrupted tasks around 90% more accurately.

Her study suggested that our desire to finish a task stores it in our memory until it has been completed.

Appropriately, it became known as ‘the Zeigarnik Effect’.

You might have experienced this yourself…

That business plan you began working on… that course where you only studied the first few modules… that opening module you started writing but didn’t finish.

Do these ever plague you with a nagging sense of guilt?

Well, this is a classic downside of the Zeigarnik Effect…

However, there is a way to turn that around and USE this effect in a positive way to get more done!

How to Turn the Zeigarnik Effect into Brain Fuel

A while back I wrote to you about Dr. Jeff Spencer’s “Three Lists”.

Do you remember? If not take a look at it here INSERT LINK

It was a method for giving your brain closure each day so that it stops fretting over things you started but didn’t finish.

You write three lists…

• List 1: “Here’s what I got done today.”
• List 2: “What I need to do tomorrow – and I know exactly how to do it”
• List 3: “Here’s what I need to do—but I don’t know how yet.”

Effectively, it’s a way to get over the guilty feelings caused by the Zeigarnik Effect.

But it’s also a powerful motivational trick.

You see, the very act of BEGINNING a task can ‘open a loop’ in your mind.

This creates a nagging tension that won’t go away until it’s resolved and you ‘close the loop’ – ie. finish what you started.

For example, you might…

• Watch the first video of some training
• Get Chat GPT to create a research report
• Sketch out a course chapter by chapter
• Write one paragraph of a course module

It might only be 5-10 minutes of work…

But the act of starting flips a mental switch that keeps the task active in the background of your mind.

The tension will build quietly until you feel compelled to return and finish the task.

Used this way, the Zeigarnik Effect becomes a form of ‘brain fuel’, where you light the fire and get the energy going, driving you forwards to a big goal.

However, this isn’t some guaranteed productivity switch that flips the moment you dabble in something.

If that were true, then none of us would have half-written courses and abandoned business ideas scattered all over the place!

4 Steps for Using the Zeigarnik Effect

The key is to be mindful about the Zeigarnik Effect, rather than using it as an excuse to start any old project, assuming that its magic will kick in automatically.

Here’s how to do it:

• Choose one high-priority project. Think about something that you have been meaning to start (or finish) but never quite got round to it.
• Start small with an achievable task. Set a timer for 20 minutes and tackle just one element. It could be a paragraph. One course video. One blog post.
• Write out Jeff Spencer’s 3 lists, so your brain knows exactly how to pick up where it left off – and so that it subconsciously works on difficult problems before the next session.

Now let your own mind become that nagging motivational driver to ensure that you come back to it again tomorrow.

When it comes down to it, this is about taking action to get something started – opening the loop of your own personal success story, so that you are more driven to close it again.

So if you get 5 minutes today, have a think about the projects you’ve started, or been meaning to start.

What could you do to open (or re-open) the loop?

And do let me know if you find this helpful!