Date: 13.12.2023

Raise a hand if you cringe every time you hear/read the phrase, "unleash your potential!".

The online world is crowded with folks who promise to change your life if you do this technique, or use this method, or read/watch this piece of content.

Supposedly, by doing this thing, you will become smarter, richer, and even sexier.

However, when you do read/watch the thing, something interesting happens.

Sure, probably what's mentioned in the video/article/book does make a lot of sense. Rationally speaking, it has the potential to make your life better. Yet, your life remains utterly the same.

The reason?

You move on to the next person who also has something to share in the context of "becoming the best version of yourself."

There are a ton of useful resources online. At the same time, they are useless if we don't take the time to apply them to our lives.

And what do we typically do?

When we see a gold nugget of information, instead of disengaging from our device to start practicing the new revolutionary idea. We fall into the habit of proactively hoarding extra information, thinking that reading/watching more on the topic will somehow upgrade our lives.

There is a certain paradox here.

We are surrounded by useful information on pretty much every available topic. Yet, this information is useless because we are not actually using it.

The Zeigarnik Effect

When you go to bed after a stressful day. Do you think about tasks that are still not done yet? Unfinished activities that require your attention in the morning?

According to psychologists, when you start working on something but do not finish it. Thoughts of the unfinished work continue to occupy mental space even when you've moved on to other things.

Discovered by Bluma Zeigarnik, this is called the Zeigarnik effect.

The gist is that we remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.

While this can be viewed as a mostly bad trait of the human brain — seem like certain tasks are chasing us like an evil spirit. We can leverage it.

By deliberately taking a break while working on a project, your brain will continue to actively think about the task itself. Helping you find gaps in your initial assessment and thus, identify better solutions.

From my desk:

• The Myth of The 1% Better Every Day Theory: "Every self-respecting self-help junkie trying to master self-improvement has surely heard the theory of becoming 1 percent better every day. After all, it has all the major components to become a buzzword: it’s easy to get, it offers groundbreaking results, and it’s..."

From around the web:

• 100 Little Ideas: "A list of ideas, in no particular order and from different fields, that help explain how the world works..."

In the next issue, we will talk about why we typically fail at New Year's resolutions.

Talk soon,

Ivaylo Durmonski