Ever planned on watching one episode of a TV show on Netflix and end up watching the entire season in one sitting? Maybe even the entire bloody series depending on how bored you are? I’ve done it. I’m slightly ashamed to admit it. But it’s human nature to feel the NEED to keep watching once the episode is over. Why? It’s because of something called the Zeigarnik Effect.
It’s present in all great TV shows. It’s why you’re chomping at the bit for the next episode of Game Of Thrones each week. It’s the reason you can waste an entire Sunday watching a new british comedy. (Just me?)
Here’s Wikipedia’s slightly-too-complicated description of this effect: “The Zeigarnik Effect is the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008, pg. 122).
The automatic system signals the conscious mind, which may be focused on new goals, that a previous activity was left incomplete. It seems to be human nature to finish what we start and, if it is not finished, we experience dissonance.”
Here’s what that says in plain english: People hate not knowing the end of a story.
They hate when something says “Oh you won’t believe what Tom said about you” and then don’t tell you what Tom said. They hate it when there’s two minutes left in the big game and the satellite goes out. The reason is because once they’ve become invested in something, or something is relevant to them, they want to know the conclusion.
This “not knowing” creates what’s called an open loop. Once you open the loop people feel the NEED to close it. If you create open loops in your writing then people will get as addicted to your emails as they do to Game of Thrones.
There are a lot of complicated fancy ways to create open loops. And there are a handful of dead simple ways to do it. I outline how you can use those methods to create a product that people USE and CONSUME. A product people are addicted to. I’ve done with my own products.
The people on those lists are worth over $10 per name every month. And that’s not including continuities. Interested in creating a product ridiculously fast using email?
