The Zeigarnik Effect & ADHD: How to Stop Spinning on Unfinished Tasks

Let’s talk about that unique experience of ADHD overwhelm where you just can’t settle into focusing on one thing because your brain is looping on dozens (if not hundreds) of unfinished tasks.

It’s like our brains have all these invisible programs running in the background draining our energy and capacity.

• That half-finished project from three weeks ago? Still running.
• The text you’ve been meaning to send? Still running.
• The hair appointment you want to schedule but keep putting it off because they still don’t have online scheduling?! Yep, still running.

And every single one of these open tasks is quietly draining our mental batteries—even when we’re not actively thinking about them.

And here’s what’s so frustrating: most of these looping tasks don’t actually matter. But they seem incredibly urgent simply because they’re unfinished—and that false urgency is drowning out the things we actually care about.

Today, we’re diving into why our brains work this way, and most importantly—how to close these loops so they stop running in the background.

Listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcasting app. Prefer to read? No problem! Keep scrolling for a summary of key takeaways.

In Episode 341 we’re exploring:

• The Science of “Sticky” Thoughts: What the Zeigarnik Effect is and why unfinished tasks take up twice as much memory space.
• The Two Types of Loops: How to distinguish between “trivial urgency” (the loops that don’t matter) vs. the actual priorities that need a decision.
• Why We Avoid Closing Them: The link between open loops, perfectionism, and the fear of making the “wrong” decision.
• Four Actionable Ways to Effectively Close Your Loops: Clear your mind for greater presence, even on low energy days

What Is the Zeigarnik Effect?

The Zeigarnik effect is named after Bluma Zeigarnik, a psychologist working in the early 20th century. She noticed something interesting while observing waiters in a restaurant: the waiters could remember incredibly detailed information about tables with open tabs—what people ordered, who was sitting where, all these specifics. But the moment a table paid their bill and left? That information was gone. Completely forgotten.

What she discovered through her research was that our brains do everything they can to keep incomplete tasks active in our working memory. In fact, in her studies, participants who were interrupted midway through a task were twice as likely to remember the details compared to those who finished and were asked about the task later.

While this may sound useful—and in situations like the waitstaff she observed, it is!—these findings also remind us of an important fact: unfinished tasks literally take up more space in our brains than completed ones.

When something is unfinished and our brain perceives it as important, it keeps that task looping in our mind. We hold onto those details, which means they demand valuable cognitive energy to keep the information front and center.

The Productivity Myth That Backfires for ADHD Brains

In the productivity space, some people took this research and ran with it in what I think is a very unhelpful direction. The advice goes something like this: “Just start something,” and your brain will automatically feel compelled to finish it because the project is front and center and it wants to close the loop.

I mean…sure, maybe that’s true for some people. But I can tell you it’s not true for most of the things I do. Nor is it true for the majority of ADHD brains I’ve coached or met.

The idea that just starting something will create enough discomfort that you’ll feel compelled to finish it? Uhhh, no. That certainly hasn’t been my experience.

As someone with a million new ideas and the drive to start all of them instantly, what that leaves me with are countless unfinished projects and tasks, all of which have open loops, vying for my attention and making me feel completely unsettled and scattered.

👉 Get My Favorite Strategy For Capturing Your Brilliant Ideas Here + Snag Your Brilliant Ideas List Template Here

Why Open Loops Are Especially Draining for ADHD Brains

Let’s explore why these open loops are particularly overwhelming for those of us with ADHD.

What I’ve found for myself and the hundreds of ADHD brains I’ve worked with over the years is that most of the time, we care deeply about what we’re doing—especially if it’s something we chose to do or we have a clear “why” behind it. So when we start something, we have every intention to return to it.

The problem isn’t lack of care or intention. The challenge is that we struggle with:

• Impulsivity and saying no to the next new idea
• Prioritization and knowing where to start
• Determining what’s actually more important when everything seems equally important and urgent

And here’s what’s almost always happening: the urgent is pulling attention away from the important. These undone tasks seem incredibly urgent to the brain simply because they’re undone—not because they actually matter more than everything else.

So when we’re filling our minds with so many open loops, many of which aren’t actually our priorities or areas of focus, it becomes extra overwhelming. Our biggest goals—the ones that would bring real fulfillment and meaning—get pushed aside by all this noise of unfinished tasks that seem urgent but might not be truly important.

Instead of having one or two open loops motivating us forward, we end up with dozens of them. All competing for attention. All feeling equally urgent. All creating that background urgency. And all stealing mental space away from what we actually want to focus on.

What Open Loops Actually Look Like (With Examples)

I find there are two general categories of open loops:

Category 1: Loops that don’t actually matter much, but seem urgent simply because they’re undone

Category 2: Loops that DO matter, but they’re stuck in this spinning, unresolved state (usually because they require a decision or need more information), and they take up way more mental energy than we want to give them

Category 1: The Unimportant Loops Stealing Your Focus

Maybe it’s that random article someone sent you three weeks ago that you told yourself you’d read “when you have time.” It’s sitting in your inbox, marked as unread and not actually important, but it seems like this little obligation you haven’t fulfilled.

Or maybe you’re listening to a business podcast and hear about different strategies people use to boost engagement on their social media posts. It’s interesting, so your brain labels it as urgent and starts telling you that you need to be doing these things too.

Now you’re spending extra mental energy thinking about these strategies, when if you actually slowed down, you’d realize these ideas are pulling your focus away from what you intentionally decided was your focus for the quarter.

Reflection question: What’s looping for you right now that maybe doesn’t deserve so much focus?

Category 2: Important Loops That Remain Unresolved

Then there are the loops that DO matter—things that are genuinely on your priority list—but they’re stuck spinning:

Travel planning: Your brain wants to optimize every detail to make sure you have the best options and the best use of time. But you don’t have all the information yet. So you’re trying to optimize without knowing all the details while also resisting making final decisions because there are too many unknowns. It becomes this open loop of unmade decisions that just keeps spinning—should I book this flight? Wait for that other option? What if this changes?

The thoughtful text: There’s a message you want to reply to that requires some thought. You want a few minutes to reflect before sending it off, so you tell yourself you’ll do it later. But since you don’t have a clear way of reminding yourself, it stays there nagging at you—like an annoying grain of sand in your sandal—even though you know you don’t have capacity to focus on it right now.

Paper piles: Mail and papers sit on the counter because you’re not sure if you need to keep them or not. Bills, bank statements, random documents. Should I file this? Shred it? Keep it just in case? Instead of deciding, it sits in a waiting pile. Another open loop.

These things DO matter to some degree. But they’re taking up disproportionate mental space. And meanwhile, the things that matter MOST—like mapping out your next big project, spending time with family, or having mental space to think creatively—those things get crowded out by the noise of all these spinning loops.

Reflection question: What’s looping for you right now that is important, but could benefit from a closed loop for now?

How We Respond to Open Loop Overwhelm

When you have enough of these loops—the trivial decisions that don’t matter, the travel planning, the carefully-worded messages, the paper piles, the half-finished projects—it’s no longer just one helpful reminder. It’s a constant swirl of mental noise drowning out what you actually care about.

We all respond to this overwhelm in slightly different ways:

Shutdown mode: Everything feels equally urgent, so you get lost in a fog where you can’t prioritize anything and just zone out. (If you’ve taken my Overwhelm to Action quiz and you’re a Turtle, this is probably your go-to response.)

Avoidance mode: Returning to certain loops feels entirely too emotionally or cognitively expensive. The stakes feel too high, and your brain tries to protect you by avoiding the whole thing—scrolling TikTok, researching products on Amazon, or bouncing from one new idea to the next. (Gazelles, I’m looking at you!)

Procrastination/Procrastiworking mode: You know the task matters, but you keep putting it off because either the emotional toll feels too big, the entry point is unclear, or you’re afraid of doing it wrong. So you keep yourself busy with something else “that needs to get done eventually,” or you help someone else with THEIR priority because that feels more comfortable. (Lions and Chameleons, you may hang out here sometimes.)

Don’t know your overwhelm type? Take my free 7-question quiz designed specifically for ADHD brains. You’ll discover the unique way overwhelm presents for your brain, the obstacles that pattern creates, and powerful steps to help you shift from overwhelm into action. Take the quiz now →

Where Open Loops Show Up Most Often

When we identify common patterns, we can start spotting these loops more easily in our lives. Here are the four main categories:

1. Communication: Emails, text messages, any kind of follow-up where you’re trying to get the wording just right

2. Decision points: Anytime you’re postponing a choice because you’re waiting for more certainty or information

3. Projects with fuzzy edges: Where you’re not certain what “done” actually looks like, or there are too many possible next steps or ways of doing things

4. Personal admin and care tasks: Making appointments, filling out forms, maintenance stuff, dealing with paper piles

These four categories tend to be particularly sticky because they involve people, values, identity, and future consequences—all of which makes them rise to the top of the priority list. But when we have so many of them, they don’t become one clear priority we can focus on. They become a swirl of competing urgencies.

How to Know Which Loops Actually Deserve Your Attention

So we’ve established that we have too many open loops creating unnecessary mental load. The question becomes: how do we know which loops actually deserve our attention? How do we figure out what to focus on and what we can set down?

I’ve found that asking yourself some really concrete questions can help cut through that noise:

Check in with your body

Is this loop keeping you up at night or waking you up at 3am? Is it preventing you from being present in other areas of your life? Our bodies often know what actually matters before our brains catch up.

Think about your future self

Will Future You in one week be genuinely grateful you handled this, or will it barely register? Is this loop preventing something you actually want from happening? Or will spending time on this activity prevent you from your true priority?

Think about relationships

Will doing this impact a relationship that matters to you—either positively or negatively? Is someone you care about waiting on you, and do you actually have the power to move this forward right now?

Pay attention to persistence

Does this loop keep coming back even when you try to dismiss it? Just because a task feels loud or novel doesn’t necessarily mean it deserves your attention. But if that loop keeps looping—if there’s a persistence to it—that’s probably more clarifying than something that just seems immediately urgent once.

4 Ways to Close Mental Loops Without Finishing Everything

Here’s the concept I want to make sure everyone hears because it’s the thing that allows us to drop into that grounded, calm energy: you don’t actually have to finish the task to close the loop.

Yes, we want to close the loops so we have a clearer mind. But to create that clarity, we don’t necessarily have to fully finish the task.

The brain doesn’t require completion. It just requires clarity about next steps and containment of when you’ll return to it.

1. Leave Breadcrumb Trails

Instead of seeing that email sitting in your inbox on Friday at the end of the day and just leaving it there as an open loop to reply to on Monday, you might instead write three bullet points of information you want to address in the email and set a reminder in your task manager to tackle it first thing when you’re back Monday morning.

You’ve given your brain a specific entry point with clear next steps, so it doesn’t have to hold the loop open worrying about how or when you’ll start.

2. Park Your Decisions

I was working with a client earlier this winter who was planning travel to see a band, but he didn’t have the tour dates yet. So instead of letting that loop keep spinning with no resolution, he parked the decision. He wrote down his options, noted what information he was waiting for, and scheduled when he’d return to make the final choice once the band released their dates.

Loop closed, even though the decision wasn’t made yet.

👉 Want Support Making Confident Decisions? Try This!

3. Brain Dump Into a Trusted System

The classic brain dump works really well, as long as you’re dumping those thoughts and tasks into the same trusted system every time—whether that’s the same notebook, a list in Todoist, or a database in Notion.

You know you won’t forget because it’s captured in that one place you always check.

4. Create an End-of-Day or End-of-Week Ritual

Establish some sort of ritual—an end-of-day sweep or end-of-week check-in where you regularly ask yourself: What’s open? What’s next? Where is it captured? What can I put down?

Even those paper piles that sit in waiting mode: You may not have time to sort through every piece of mail right this second. But you can decide: “On Saturday morning, I’ll spend 30 minutes with the mail pile, and I’m building in an extra 15 minutes at the end to actually file or shred everything so the counter is clear when I’m done.”

Loop closed. Your brain knows when you’re returning to it, what done looks like, and that you’ve left yourself enough time to actually get there.

You can use these four approaches even on low-energy days. You’re essentially showing your brain: “Don’t worry, I won’t forget. I’ve made note of this, and I’ve closed the loop by deciding where it lives and when I’ll return to it.”

👉 Want Support On Building Habits & Routines That Last? Free Course: ADHD Routine Revamp.

The Bottom Line

When you notice your brain looping on unfinished tasks, it’s not inherently a bad thing. Your brain is actually working really hard to protect what it perceives as important.

The challenge is that many of us have too many loops competing for our attention—which is incredibly common for ADHD brains—and it usually leaves us spinning in overwhelm.

When you clarify the loops that matter and make time to close them, you give your brain the gift of relief. You’re creating space for that grounded calm and clarity you’ve been looking for.

And you can do that—you can close those loops—not by finishing everything on your list, but by giving each loop a container and deciding when you’ll return to it. Once you have it out of your already-taxed working memory and captured in a reliable place, your brain can breathe a sigh of relief and put it down and rest.

And so can you.

More ADHD Resources:

• Discover my favorite ADHD resources
• Learn my Top 10 Tips to Work With Your ADHD Brain
• Access the I’m Busy Being Awesome Planning System
• Get the I’m Busy Being Awesome Podcast Roadmap
• Free course: ADHD Routine Revamp

Leave IBBA A Rating & Review!

If you enjoy the podcast, would you be a rockstar and leave a review? Doing so helps others find the show and spreads these tools to even more people.

1. Go to Apple Podcasts
2. Click on the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, where you see the reviews.
4. Simply tap five stars; that’s it!
5. Bonus points if you’re willing to leave a few sentences sharing what you enjoy about the podcast or a key takeaway from the episode you just heard. Thanks, friend!