PARIS, June 8 — From work and admin to grocery shopping, household chores and cleaning, sometimes daily life is just a long list of things that you don’t ever have time to get done, but which linger in your mind.

This ever-accumulating mental load of unfinished jobs could be related to a psychological phenomenon called the Zeigarnik effect.

The Zeigarnik effect describes our tendency to better remember tasks that have been started, interrupted and not completed.

"Even without knowing its name, many people suffer from this effect,” says French psychologist Amélia Lobbé, author of the book Vaincre la dépression et le burn-out (Conquering depression and burnout), published by éditions Leduc.

The Zeigarnik effect is the legacy of Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, who developed this theory in the 1920s.

Sitting at a café table, she noticed that waiters were able to take and keep track of complex orders, remembering them until they were fulfilled and paid for.

Then, this information seemed to leave their minds. She confirmed this intuition with a clinical study.

When the build-up becomes overwhelming

So how can this phenomenon affect us when it becomes problematic?

"Having a tendency to not be able to disconnect from your work and feeling pressurised, because you can’t finish everything are symptoms,” explains Amélia Lobbé.

But this can also apply to everyday life. Dealing with administrative documents, for example, or even planning vacations. This build-up of unfinished tasks "can lead to burnout.”

This phenomenon can notably be caused by social pressures that push people to increase the number of activities or projects that they have on the go, with the risk of not ever finishing any of them.

Children can also be affected by this, warns Amélia Lobbé, who advises parents not to overload their children’s schedules.

"It’s better to do one activity thoroughly than to do four half-heartedly,” she explains.

How to break the cycle?

This effect can be particularly problematic for disorganised people. To overcome this, the expert encourages people to consider "batch working.”

This time management and organisation method involves condensing an activity over a given period.

For example, set aside two hours on Saturday morning to do your administrative paperwork.

"This allows you to clear your mind and save time,” explains the expert.

The second solution proposed by the psychologist is to use the "Kanban method.”

Again, this is another way of organising tasks and time. The idea is to create a table with three columns — to do, in progress, done — in order to visualise workflow.

Then list the things that need to be done in relation to their progress. This table can be made on a computer or on a sheet of paper.

Finally, Amélia Lobbé advises people "to disconnect and learn to compartmentalise your private life and your professional life.”

She encourages people to go easy on themselves while helping them to reconnect with their personal lives as a source of pleasure. — ETX Studio