You're Tired From Not Finishing

I want to talk about why you're tired. Why all these unfinished tasks in your life are draining you more than actual work. And not tired in the sense of all I went to the gym or I went for a run or I didn't get sleep. Say you sleep eight hours a night, you eat well, your diet's on point, you have a pretty normal work schedule, but you're still exhausted all the time. Not physically tired, but mentally tired. You kind of feel like you're running on 30% battery by 2 p.m. even though you really haven't done anything particularly demanding. And you assume it's a workload, it could be too many meetings, too many emails, maybe it's just too much on your plate. So you try and optimize, right? Time blocking, better morning routine, earlier bedtime, productivity apps, but nothing changes, you're still exhausted. Here's what's actually happening. You are not tired from the work you're doing. You're tired from the work you're not finishing. It could be the text that you saw three days ago and you still haven't responded to. It could be the apology that you know you have to make. It could be a decision that you've been avoiding for two weeks, a conversation that you keep postponing. The project that's 90% done, but you still haven't shipped. See, all of these tasks, they run in the background of your mind all day. Every single one of these tasks is this open process that consumes your mental resources. See, your brain treats unfinished business like a computer treats open applications. Each one takes up RAM. And if you leave enough of these applications running, your whole system is going to slow down. So you are not burnt out from overwork. You are burnt out from cognitive overhead. Now, why can't your brain let go of all these things that you haven't finished yet? Well, let's look at psychology. In the 1920s, psychologists named Bluma Zyvernick noticed something very strange. Waders could remember complex orders perfectly while customers were still eating, but the moment the bill was paid and the customers left, the waiters forgot everything about that table. And she tested this formally and she discovered what is now called the zycronic effect, right? Your brain is wired to hold onto unfinished tasks and let go of completed ones immediately. Now, this was useful when our tasks in our life were simple and immediate, right? Hunt the animal, eat the animal, done. But now life is a little bit more complex, tasks are a little bit more abstract and a lot of them are endless, meaning they don't just end after the hunt and dinner is over. And your brain is still trying to hold onto all of these tasks simultaneously. And this creates all these open loops, all these open applications in your brain, in your in your mental computer, in your cognitive computer, right? And each of these open loops is a background process. And every unfinished thing is a tab that your brain keeps open just in case. And this is why you're tired. See, I've gone down this rabbit hole because two years ago, I was more exhausted than I'd ever been. I was sleeping nine hours, I was waking up tired, I couldn't focus, I couldn't think clearly at all this brain fog. I just felt like I was moving at 50 to 75% of my normal speed. I wasn't working more hours in usual, I'd actually scaled back, so fewer calls, fewer commitments, more time off. But I felt worse, not better. And one day, I was complaining to a friend about it and he asked, how many things are you in the middle of right now? And I started listening everything out. So there was an article that I'd half written, I wanted to finish that. There were three emails that I'd drafted, but not sent yet. There was a conversation that I'd been meaning to have with my business partner for two weeks. There was a decision about moving cities that I've been avoiding for a month. There was a dentist appointment that I needed to schedule. There was a friend's text that I'd read and forgotten to respond to. There was a contract that was sitting in my inbox waiting for review. So I counted about 12 or 13, 14 different things, 12 open loops just off the top of my head. And he said, every one of those things is costing you energy all day, even when you're not thinking about them. And I didn't believe them until I spent one weekend closing every loop I could find, sent the emails, had the conversation, made the decision, scheduled the appointment, responded to the text, either finished or explicitly abandoned all those half done projects. And Monday morning, I woke up with more energy than I'd had in months. And it's not because I'd slept longer or rested more. It's because I finally stopped carrying cognitive debt. See, there is a hidden cost to all do it later. See, people don't understand open loops. They don't understand that open loops cost more to keep them open than they cost to close. So you think that you are saving time by not responding to the text right now, but you're not. You're spending cognitive resources on it every single time you see their name, every time you unlock your phone, every time you think, Oh, yeah, I need to respond to that. That is three seconds of mental load dozens of times a day for potentially weeks, right? And compare that to the two minutes that it would have taken you just to respond to the math is obvious, but you don't do the math. You just keep carrying this burden. You keep carrying this process, just running in the background of your brain. Same thing with difficult conversations you're avoiding. You think that you were saving yourself the stress by not having that difficult conversation, but you're not really because you're having it in your head over and over, imagining how it will go, rehearsing what you'll say, worrying about the outcome, and you are spending hours of mental energy avoiding a conversation that would take 20 minutes max. And this is what open loops do. They disguise themselves as I'll handle this later while actually costing you more than handling them now ever would. And there's three main types of loops that drain you the most because not all open loops cost the same. Some are background noise, some are true battery killer. So here are the three that cost the most. First, you have the relationship debt. So the text you haven't answered, the call you haven't returned, the apology you owe, the gratitude you haven't expressed, the conflict you're avoiding, these cost the most because they involve other people. And your brain treats social obligations as high priority threats. So every time you see that person's name, your brain flags it. Every time you think about them, there's this small spike of guilt or anxiety and this runs constantly all day for weeks or even months if you let it. I had a friend I'd cancel plans with three times each time for legitimate reasons, but I never properly apologized or rescheduled. And for two months, every time I opened up Instagram and I saw his posts, I felt this small hit of guilt. Every time I thought about reaching out to anyone, my brain reminded me that I still owed him a message. Two months of that costing me energy multiple times per day. Finally, sent him a message, hey, I've been a terrible friend, I cancel three times. I never properly rescheduled that's on me. Can we lock in a time this week? He responded in five minutes. Obviously, he didn't even remember or care. We met for coffee. Conversation lasted 30 minutes, two minutes to write the message, 30 minutes for coffee, two months of cognitive drain eliminated. That math is insane when you actually calculated. The second type of open loop is the decision deck. So it could be the choice that you have it made. The option that you're still considering or the path that you haven't fully committed to because your brain hates uncertainty. It will keep running simulations until you make a decision. Should you take the job? Should you move? Should you end the relationship? Should you start the project? Every single day you don't decide, your brain is processing both options. Running scenarios, weighing pros and cons, and imagining all these potential futures. And this is exhausting. Not because the decision is hard, because indecision forces your brain to hold multiple realities simultaneously. I spent three months deciding whether or not to shut down a project I've been running for two years. Three months of maybe I should wind it down, but what I'm giving up too soon, but it's draining me, but I put so much time into it, right? Some cost fallacy. But the mental energy that I spent going back and forth for three months was 10 times more exhausting than the decision itself. And when I finally decided to shut it down, I felt lighter immediately. Not because it was the right decision, but because I stopped forcing my brain to stimulate two different futures. And the third kind of open loop that really hurts is completion debt. So this could be the project that's 90% done, but it's not shipped yet. It could be the email that's drafted, but not sent. It could be anything that you started, but basically haven't finished. Now, these are the worst because they are so close to closure, and your brain knows it. Your brain knows you could finish this, which means it keeps some flight as this high priority thing, even though you're ignoring them. I'll give you an example. I had an article a while back that I'd written. There's about 95% complete, but I really wanted this article to hit, and I really needed maybe one final edit, and then I could publish it. And I let it sit for six weeks, not because I didn't have time, because I kept telling myself, I'll finish it this weekend. For six weeks, every time I thought about writing, my brain reminded me about that unfinished article. Every time I saw my drafts folder, I remembered it. Every time someone asked me what I was working on, I remembered it. Six weeks of cognitive overhead for what ended up being maybe 45 minutes of work to finish and publish. In the moment I published it, I felt this mental weight lift, not because publishing was satisfying, but because I'd finally closed the loop. So what actually changes when you start to close some of these loops, especially the three that I mentioned, which are the ones that sort of have the most draw on your cognitive horsepower and sit with you, and they just feel the heaviest. So when you start aggressively closing loops in your life, three things happen very fast. First, your baseline energy increases, not because you're resting more, but because you are carrying less cognitive overhead. You wake up with mental clarity. You can focus without effort. You don't feel drained by 2 p.m. for no reason. Not motivation. It's just reduced cognitive load. Second, you stop procrastinating on new things because usually, procrastination is not about laziness. It's about cognitive capacity. So when you're working memory is full of all these open loops, starting something new feels overwhelming. Your brain doesn't have space for it. When you close loops aggressively, you have mental bandwidth for new things. Starting projects feels easy again. And third, you realize how much energy you've been wasting, because once you experience a difference, you can't unsee how expensive open loops are. You start noticing every time you say, I'll do this later, and you feel the cost immediately. You become ruthless about closing things quickly or explicitly deciding not to do them. It's not about productivity. It's about not caring unnecessary weight. So here's what I do now in my life to close some of my loops. Hopefully, this will help you. Every Sunday, I spend 30 minutes doing a loop audit. I go through five categories, and I write down every open loop I can think of. So communication, text, emails, calls, I need to make decisions, choices I have in major, completion, so projects at 70% or greater than need finishing, repairs, things broken, or needed so it could be appointments, maintenance, errands, whatever, and then social. So conversations I'm avoiding, gratitude I haven't expressed, apologies I owe, whatever. So communications, decisions, completions, repairs, socials, then I close as many as possible immediately. And the ones that I can't close, I will schedule time to do, or I will explicitly decide not to do. Most loops in your life can be closed in less than five minutes. Text the person, make the decision, schedule the thing, have the conversation. The ones that can't be closed quickly put it on a calendar for a specific day and time. And then you can stop thinking about them until that time, and the ones that I'm not going to do, write down, not doing this and delete them from your mental space. This takes 30 minutes, once a week, it saves me hours of cognitive overhead every single day. So, what you should do right now, stop listening to this podcast, or it's almost done, but you can finish it. But then take out a piece of paper or open a note on your phone, write down every open loop you can think of, everything you're in the middle of, every decision you're avoiding, every conversation you're postponing, every unfinished thing. You're probably going to find 10 within two minutes and keep going. You're likely going to have like 20 or 30. Now, look at the list and start to ask yourself, which of these could I close in the next 24 hours? Not all of them, just the ones that would take less than 30 minutes each. Pick three, close them today. Send the text, make the decision, have the conversation, finish the thing, schedule the appointment, and then notice how you feel tomorrow morning. You're not going to feel more motivated or more inspired, you're just going to feel lighter. Like, you're running on 80% battery instead of 30. Like, you can think clearly again, and it's not because you rested. It's because you stopped carrying cognitive debt. Now, what this actually means is that you have to understand you are not tired in most cases because you work too hard. Most people don't work as hard as they think they do. You are tired because you are carrying dozens of open loops. Each one is consuming mental resources. Each one is running in the background all day, every day. So your exhaustion and life isn't physical. It's cognitive overhead from unfinished business. So the solution is not better sleep, more vacation. It is closing your loops aggressively. Respond to the text immediately or decide not to respond. Make the decision or decide not to decide. Finish the thing or explicitly abandon it. Stop letting things sit in limbo. Limbo is expensive. Your energy isn't gone. It's just being spent on keeping loops open instead of doing the actual work. Close the loops. Watch your energy return.