29 · Remembering
Zeigarnik Effect
Unfinished tasks tug at people. The famous claim is that they're remembered better; what holds up is that people want to go back and finish them.
Evidence: DisputedWhat we do with it
- 01
Show progress, so people know what's left and want to finish.
- 02
Let people save and come back. An open task keeps tugging at them.
- 03
Use the tug kindly. Fake to-do badges built to pull people back just annoy them.
Examples
Getting it wrong, getting it right.
Don't
A red badge on an unfinished profile that never goes away, and an email a day about it.
Do
“Pick up where you left off” the next time someone opens the app. One prompt, at the moment it's useful.
The evidence
What the research says.
The memory claim mostly hasn't held up. Romain Ghibellini and Beat Meier's 2025 meta-analysis found that, leaving out Zeigarnik's own study, people recalled interrupted and finished tasks about equally. A related effect did hold: about two-thirds of interrupted tasks got resumed when people had the chance. That one, named for Maria Ovsiankina, is the part worth designing for.
How our view changed
We no longer say people remember unfinished tasks better. We say they want to finish them. So we make it easy to pick up where you left off, and we don't nag.
Sources
- Zeigarnik, B. (1927). Das Behalten erledigter und unerledigter Handlungen. Psychologische Forschung, 9.
- Ovsiankina, M. (1928). Die Wiederaufnahme unterbrochener Handlungen. Psychologische Forschung, 11.
- Ghibellini, R., & Meier, B. (2025). Interruption, recall and resumption: A meta-analysis of the Zeigarnik and Ovsiankina effects. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12.
- MacLeod, C. M. (2020). Zeigarnik and von Restorff: The memory effects and the stories behind them. Memory & Cognition, 48(6).
Last reviewed November 7, 2026. How we keep this current