I'm A Positive Psychiatrist & This Habit Can Scientifically Help With Procrastination

To overcome the dillydallying, allow us to introduce you to an expert-approved habit: Apparently, you can hack your brain to be more productive with a little something called the Zeigarnik effect. "It's such a weird thing, but I think we can all relate to it," says positive psychiatrist Samantha Boardman, M.D., author of Everyday Vitality, on the mindbodygreen podcast. Ahead, she explains how the science-backed phenomenon works (thus helping you work smarter). 

It all started when Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik was sitting in a bustling café in Vienna. She noticed something strange: The busy servers seemed to have an easy time remembering orders that were half-filled, but if she asked them about an order once it was fully completed, they had little memory of what the customers had. Did they order a cappuccino? A croissant? 

"It really speaks to this idea that our attention focuses on what's half-finished, even what's negative and what's undone," says Boardman. 

And after you're done, Boardman says don't forget to acknowledge the accomplishment. "We're terrible at giving ourselves any credit because we don't even remember [the task]," she says. "We have to be a little more deliberate about what we have done." The acknowledgment can be as simple as striking the item off a to-do list—after all, that gratification has brain-healthy benefits. 

According to the Zeigarnik effect, our brains tend to remember half-finished tasks better than completed ones. To use this research to your advantage, you can "hack" your brain by starting a small portion of a task; your brain will then interrupt you, encouraging you to go back and complete what you started.