The Mindset Mentor - A Neurological Secret to Getting More Done (The Brain Hack You Need)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast and you live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive inspirational text messages from me sporadically throughout the week directly to your cell phone, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm going to be sharing with you a psychological trick that will actually help you get more done and be more productive. And we're going to talk about how to use your brain and the actual psychological effects of your brain to cross off more things on your to-do list.

Starting point is 00:00:54 Because really what it comes down to is your brain. I'm going to talk about how your brain will actually stress you out when you have a to-do list, but how to use that. There's a whole psychological effect that comes from it. How to use that for actually your benefit. You ever feel like you have, you're doing things all day long and you're just constantly working, working, working, working, working. And at the end of the day, you feel like you didn't really do anything. Like you don't, you feel like you did things, but you don't feel like you really moved the needle. You don't feel like you were productive. Or do you ever get really stressed out by your to-do list and not really have a feeling of accomplishment from it?

Starting point is 00:01:32 It's more of like, I know people who avoid to-do lists because they stress them out more than they actually help them. I'm going to actually help you understand why this is. And I'm going to teach you how to use this psychological effect to help you get more done. So what this is, when you have a to-do list or you have something that needs to be done, whether it's a to-do list or whether it's an open loop in some sort of way, the psychological effect is actually called the Zeigarnik effect or Zeigarnik effect. I don't know how to pronounce it correctly. I think it's the Zygarnik effect. It's a phenomenon that was first discovered by a Soviet psychologist, and her last name was

Starting point is 00:02:11 Zygarnik, in 1920s. And she observed that people tend to remember unfinished or uninterrupted, unfinished or interrupted tasks more than they remembered the ones that were completed. And what happened was she was at a coffee shop and she was really amazed that she was at this coffee shop and that the people who were the waiters and waitresses were remembering all of the orders so well. And what was interesting, what she found out with them is that when they, somebody ordered, they would remember pretty much perfectly the order. But after the order was delivered, it was basically like they would forget the actual order itself. Like they would have like almost 100% remembering of the order before the order was completed, like the order was actually delivered

Starting point is 00:02:57 to them. And then after it was delivered to them, they could basically just cross it off in their brain. And then there was like a 50% recall rate of what each person ordered. And so she was actually a psychologist. And what was interesting is what she found is that when we have unfinished tasks or a task that we're working on that is interrupted in some sort of way, those things we tend to remember and they tend to stress us out more than the ones that we complete. Because when they're completed, they don't really stress us out. We're like, okay, done. I can keep moving. And when something is not completed, those things can actually use our mental energy until they're completed. It's kind of like they're on the back burner. They're in the back of your head consuming energy. And this effect is based on the idea that our brains are wired to focus on what are called open loops.

Starting point is 00:03:43 Open loops are, an open loop was, if I would have started today's episode and I would have said, today I'm gonna give you the three steps to making sure that you X, Y, Z. That is a little bit of an open loop because we go, oh, there's three things. There's one, there's two, and there's three.

Starting point is 00:04:00 And I'll give you more examples of open loops as well. But our brains tend to focus and they're wired towards open loops and closing the open loops or towards unfinished tasks, which create a little bit of a sense of mental discomfort. And this discomfort is actually what drives us to complete the task. And when it's finally completed, the discomfort is resolved. And we usually just, our brain wipes the slate clean. And we can use this discomfort because it sounds like you're, I'm just, I'm just talking about discomfort. That doesn't sound like a good thing, but we can actually use this discomfort because

Starting point is 00:04:33 we now know it exists to drive us to take action and complete the tasks that we want to complete. And, you know, most of the time at the end of the day, you don't focus on everything you completed. In fact, you probably don't think at all about the things that you completed and what you got done today. What you focus on usually is what you still have to do or the things that you didn't get done. Undone work takes up a lot of our mental energy. This is why clickbait works. If you go on Instagram or you go on to, say you go into YouTube and you see the title on a thumbnail or you see it and it's like, it grabs your attention. You're like, Oh, I really want to figure out what this is all about. It's kind of like that whole thing where it's just like, shit, I feel like I need to

Starting point is 00:05:16 watch this. That's an open loop. The human mind does not like open loops. You know, we want to close the loop. And so an open, another example of an open loop would be like if the news, right? News does this all the time. They're really good at open loops. And they'll say something like, the killer chemical found in your tap water tonight at 10, that's an open loop. Then you're like, oh shit, I got to see this because I use my tap water, right? I take a shower every single day. I brush my teeth. I don't want to die. I've got to figure out what it is. That's an open loop. It causes a little bit of mental tension inside of us. It's the same thing as like cliffhangers, right? If you watch like Yellowstone or Game of Thrones, I love both of those shows. Yellowstone, incredible at cliffhangers. Game of

Starting point is 00:06:02 Thrones, probably even better at cliffhangers. And it's really tense at the end of a movie or the end of an episode where you're like, oh my God, I gotta see what happens. And it's this tense feeling, this mental discomfort of I wanna see the next episode. And this is why people binge shows. You know, I've done it before where I sit and I'm like,

Starting point is 00:06:22 oh, I'm just gonna watch one show. And then like four hours later, I'm like, Oh my God, I should have been better two hours ago. What the hell am I doing with my life? But I got to see what happens. And this is why people binge watch shows. Same thing with like starting a puzzle. If you've ever started a puzzle, like I did a puzzle, uh, when I was back home with my family and I was, I had this tension of like, we got like halfway done. And I was like, like, no, we've got to finish it. We've got to finish this damn thing. And so it's these open loops.

Starting point is 00:06:49 And so when we have a feeling of being unresolved, our brain wants to solve it. And so this can hold you back if you don't know how to use it or if you know how to use it, which I'm gonna teach you today, it can actually propel you forward. And that's why I like am so obsessed with the human

Starting point is 00:07:06 brain and with psychology and with people is because if you can study the human brain and you can understand how this complex piece of machinery that lives inside of your head works and you really understand it, you can start to use these things to actually make you more efficient, to be more motivated, to take more action, all of that. And so it's like I always say, we're given the most complex piece of machinery in the entire universe in between our ears, but we're given no manual for it. But all of the information's out there and that's what I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to get better and I'm trying to teach you guys as well. So when we're looking at this thing with open loops and everything, how can it be bad? I'm going to talk about how it can

Starting point is 00:07:41 be bad and then I'm going to tell you how to use it, right? There's an open loop. I just created one because I'm like, shit, I want to learn how to use it. So how can it be bad? Well, when we don't complete a task, our brain will focus on it, at least not, maybe not a hundred percent of focus, but it's going to, it's going to be there. It's going to focus on a little bit until it's done. It causes that mental tension. And that mental tension, if it's not used correctly, which I'll teach you how to do, tension. And that mental tension, if it's not used correctly, which I'll teach you how to do, will cause procrastination, it'll cause stress, it'll cause anxiety if you're not actually aware of it. Because when we have too many unfinished tasks on our mind, it can really start to be overwhelming, right? And it can lead to feelings of paralysis by analysis. And this can really

Starting point is 00:08:20 make it difficult to focus on the task at hand, which leads you to procrastination. A lot of people that I know that are really big planners like to plan out and put things done, but put things on a to-do list, then put things on a schedule. Sometimes what happens is when there's too many open loops, if they're not aware of the Ziegernick effect and how to use it, they get this paralysis by analysis. They're like, oh my God, I've got this massive to-do list. Oh my God, look at my schedule. It's so full. Holy shit, I don't want to do anything. And it just, it causes too much stress. And I'm going to talk about how you can actually use it. So when you know that, and that's how it could be bad if you don't know how to use it. If you know how to use it, let's talk about how this can all be used for good. One of the key implications of the Zygarnik effect is it can

Starting point is 00:09:07 be used to increase your motivation and it can also be used to increase your productivity. So knowing that this causes mental tension and knowing that our brain naturally wants to get past this mental tension, how can we use this to be more productive and to increase our motivation? Well, the bigger the task is, the harder that it can be to take action towards it, right? So when you have a really big task, you start thinking about all of the stuff that has to be done for the task. And in this moment, you're like, that's too much. And what happens? This is why I hear from so many people, I'm overwhelmed. And so you feel overwhelmed and because you feel overwhelmed, you don't end up actually doing anything. So what do you do in this situation? You take that big task and you break it down into smaller, manageable chunks and you set clear deadlines. And with this, we can tap into that natural tendency

Starting point is 00:10:00 for your brain to focus on the unfinished task, which will then drive ourselves to complete them. And so how would you use this in everyday life? Let's talk about it. So let's say that you have a really big report that's due next week and you're looking at it and you know you've got to give the report to your boss and you've got to present it to them. You've got to present it to four different managers. You're going to go, oh my God, I don't know if I can do this. This is so much. And there's so much stress and there's so much on the line for this. When you look at that, it makes it harder to actually take action. But if you break it down into, what you want to do is you want to break that actual report down

Starting point is 00:10:39 into as many tasks as you possibly can. And so it could look like this. It could be like, okay, finish report could be on your to-do list. But you could take that and you could say, okay, let's figure out the smaller tasks that need to be done and let's try to put them in order of how they need to be done. Okay. The first thing I need to do is I need to finish the introduction to the report. Okay. So that's two pages. I should make sure I finished those two pages first. So you write down, finish introduction and put on your to-do list. Done by today. Okay. Then I need to do research on the competition. Probably going to take about a whole day to research the competition. So I will put the due date for research in the competition for tomorrow. And then what I need to do is I need to actually start to break down all of our

Starting point is 00:11:24 revenue goals that we're going to need. So I'm going to put that for two days from today. So break down revenue goals. And then three days from today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to complete the plan to hit this actual revenue goal. And then what I'm going to do is at the beginning of next week, I'm going to put all of this into a PowerPoint and I'm going to create the PowerPoint, put everything in place. And the last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to put all of this into a PowerPoint and I'm going to create the PowerPoint, put everything in place. And the last thing I'm going to do is I'm going to send it to my assistant and hopefully she can make it prettier and add animations and she'll get all that done in one day. Right? So what you do is you took an entire report and you broke it down these smaller tasks.

Starting point is 00:11:58 And the reason why is because once you have that first one in front of you and you're looking at the very first one, which was to remind you, finish introduction, you go, okay, okay, yeah, I'm starting to feel a little tense. I want to get this introduction done. So then when you start on it, you actually, and this is the best part, is starting is always the hardest thing. Starting something is almost always harder than finishing it. And so you start in the unfinished task. Once you start is going to cause even more mental tension, which makes you more likely to actually go and complete that task. And so the shorter the task, the easier it will make us, uh, it will be for us in order to finish it sooner. And so it's still the exact same task. It's still finished the report, but instead of just finish the report,

Starting point is 00:12:43 it's smaller, more manageable tasks that make it even better. So it's, you know, finish the introduction, complete the research on competition, break down revenue goals, complete the plan to hit the goal, put it all into a PowerPoint, and then send to assistant to make it prettier and add animations. Still the exact same task, but now you have smaller, more manageable tasks that you can go for. And so how can you take whatever tasks are on your to-do list for today and break them down and make them more manageable and put them based off of when they are due and when they need to be done. And each time, this is an important thing that you realize too. And I write about this in my book, Level Up, which is

Starting point is 00:13:19 something called the dopamine reward system. Each time you cross something off of your to-do list, it gives you a sense of accomplishment. And so if it's going to take you a week to do this report, well, it's going to give you a week until you cross that thing off. But if you have something you could cross off every single day that feels like you're on the right path, and it gives you a sense of accomplishment. And what that does, the secret to it is it releases dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical of motivation. It's the chemical that once you get dopamine, your brain wants more dopamine. We're all dopamine fiends.

Starting point is 00:13:49 And so when you cross something off the list, you're like, hell yeah. And you get a little bit of momentum on your side. It gives you more motivation to keep going and keep driving. And the best way to use this is, you've heard me talk about it many times, it's a Palmin Dora technique, which is give yourself,

Starting point is 00:14:03 it's a time management method that breaks down your work into 25 minute intervals with five minute breaks. So 25 minutes on, five minutes off, 25 minutes on, five minutes off, 25 minutes on, five minutes off. If you want to learn more about how to actually use the Pomodoro Technique, just go back into these episodes. You can, you know, search Mindset Mentor Pomodoro Technique. I have entire episodes that teach you exactly how to use it, but you use the Pomodoro Technique. And then episodes that teach you exactly how to use it, but you use a Pomodoro technique. And then what you do is you reflect on your progress at the end of the day

Starting point is 00:14:30 and you celebrate the small wins to help you have the sense of release of tension and it increase your motivation because it feels like you're on the right path. It feels like you're progressing. So by acknowledging your progress, you'll actually feel more encouraged to either complete the next task or to get started tomorrow to complete the next task. Then you start to get that momentum on your side. And when you get momentum on your side, it makes it way easier to start crossing more stuff off.

Starting point is 00:14:56 And that's really what it comes down to. So take your big tasks, and then what you do is you put them into smaller tasks and with each task, you got to give yourself the time, the deadline of when it needs to be done. Now, what do we do now at the end of the day when we have our unfinished to-do list? Because I don't know about you,

Starting point is 00:15:13 I have unfinished to-do lists every single day. In my mind, when I started learning about the Zygarnik effect, I started going, okay, if I have a to-do list of 30 things on my to-do list and I get four done, does that mean that those 26 things are going to give me more stress? They could, unless you use it correctly. So at the end of the day, when you don't have your to-do list finished, we could have a feeling of being unresolved and our brain still wants to solve it.

Starting point is 00:15:38 What you want to do is you want to write down all of the things in your mind and all of the things in your to-do list and schedule when you'll get them done tomorrow because it makes it a lot easier for your brain to release it if it knows that it's written down in its schedule for tomorrow. It takes maybe 10 minutes at the end of every single day, but it will save you a ton of mental energy because you can mentally clock out. You know, that way you don't, and I don't know if you've done this before, I've done this many times before in my life, especially being a business owner. That way, you don't wake up at three o'clock in the morning to go to the bathroom and you stay up for hours because you start thinking about all the things that you need to do, right? And so what you do is at the end of the day, you basically mentally clock out. And what you do is you put down all of

Starting point is 00:16:20 the things that need to be done tomorrow. And you, you make sure that everything on your to-do list that did not get done has some sort of deadline. So that, and then what you do is you put down all of the things that need to be done tomorrow and you make sure that everything on your to-do list that did not get done has some sort of deadline. And then what you do is you literally say this out loud to yourself. You close your laptop, put your to-do list away, and you say, I'm done for the day. And psychologically allows your brain to kind of, okay, we're done for the day. It doesn't sound like it works. I promise you. It sounds weird to be like, I'm done for the day, but I promise you it actually works and allows your brain to subconsciously be like, okay, now we're gonna switch to a new thing.

Starting point is 00:16:50 We're done with work for the day. We'll pick it up tomorrow at 9 a.m. So this is how, when you understand your brain and you really understand the way that it works, you can actually use these psychological effects to drive you to do more versus holding you back from doing the things that you need to get done. So that's what I got for you for today's episode.

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The Mindset Mentor - A Neurological Secret to Getting More Done (The Brain Hack You Need)

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