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Lessons - You're Tired From Not Finishing (Scott) · Success Story with Scott Clary

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