The Weight of Open Loops

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I had 23 open loops draining my energy and didn't even know it. The bill I kept putting off. The message I "forgot" to send. The decision I was avoiding. The room that's been messy for three weeks. The conversation I needed to have but kept postponing. The email to the college that's been sitting in my drafts for two months. Each one felt small. Manageable. "I'll do it later." But here's what I didn't realize: every single one was quietly stealing energy I could have been using for literally anything else.

What Open Loops Actually Cost You

An open loop is anything unfinished that your brain knows needs handling. Could be big stuff:

The relationship you know you need to end
The boundary you keep avoiding setting
The project you started but never finished
The apology you've been meaning to make

Or small stuff:

The article you wrote but haven't published
The friend you said you'd call "soon" (three months ago)
The room you keep walking past without cleaning

Your brain doesn't care if it's big or small. An open loop is an open loop. And each one takes up mental bandwidth. It's like having 23 browser tabs open in your mind. Sure, your computer still works. But it's slower. Heavier. Using resources for things you're not even looking at.

The Waiter Who Remembered Everything

In the early 1900s, a psychologist named Kurt Lewin was sitting in a restaurant when he noticed something weird: waiters remembered unpaid orders way better than paid ones. The moment someone paid? The waiter forgot the order instantly. But unpaid orders? Crystal clear in their memory. Fascinated, he told his grad student Bluma Zeigarnik about this observation. She ran studies and found it wasn't just waiters - it's all of us. We remember incomplete tasks better than completed ones. This got named the Zeigarnik Effect. And here's what it means for you: unfinished business creates mental tension that doesn't go away until you close the loop. That bill you haven't paid? Your brain is tracking it. That message you haven't sent? Your subconscious is holding space for it. That decision you're avoiding? Mental energy is being diverted there whether you like it or not. Close the loop, and that energy gets released instantly.

Why Avoiding Makes It Worse

There's a study where people were given a choice: get a strong electric shock now, or a mild one later. 70% chose the strong shock immediately. Why? They just wanted to get it over with.

Prolonged uncertainty hurts more than immediate discomfort.

Bad news is better than no news. The waiting, the wondering, the mental space it takes up - that's worse than just dealing with it. But when you're overwhelmed, you avoid making decisions. I do this too. We all do. The problem? Every time you avoid closing a loop, it doesn't disappear. It just sits there, quietly draining you. And the longer it sits, the heavier it gets.

The Loops I Was Carrying

When I actually sat down and listed mine out, I found 23 things I'd been avoiding:

An email to a client I kept rewriting in my head
A friend I said I'd call two months ago
Three videos in my drafts that needed one decision each to publish
A conversation about boundaries I'd been postponing
Admin tasks I'd convinced myself weren't urgent
A project I started, got 80% done, then abandoned

Some were five-minute tasks. Some were uncomfortable conversations. Some were just decisions I'd been avoiding because I wanted to make the "perfect" choice. But all of them were taking up mental real estate I could have been using for literally anything else.

The Energy You're Bleeding

Think about where that reclaimed energy could go: Being more present in conversations instead of distracted by what you "should" be doing. Actually enjoying your downtime instead of feeling vaguely guilty. Working with focus instead of your brain constantly reminding you about the thing you're avoiding. Sleeping better because you're not lying there thinking about everything you haven't dealt with. Building confidence because you're someone who follows through instead of someone who keeps meaning to. The energy is already yours. It's just tied up in loops that haven't been closed.

How to Actually Close Them

Here's what worked for me: 1. Admit you have open loops. Don't pretend everything is handled. It's not. And that's okay. But you have to acknowledge it first. 2. Write them all down. Every single one. Don't filter. Don't judge. Just brain dump them onto a piece of paper or your phone notes. You might have 3. You might have 37. Doesn't matter. Get them out of your head and onto something external. 3. Pick the scariest one first. Not the easiest. The scariest. Because once you close that one, everything else feels manageable by comparison. As the saying goes: run toward trouble. 4. Be specific, not fuzzy. Complete this sentence: "I will [action] at [time] and [place]." Not "I should probably text them soon." "I will send that text at 2 PM today while sitting at my desk." Your brain can't execute on vague intentions. It needs concrete plans. 5. Do it now or schedule it. And if you schedule it, when the time comes - no negotiations. Do it. Don't wait to "feel ready." You won't. Do it anyway. 6. Repeat for the next loop. Here's what I noticed: closing one loop makes closing the next one easier. You build momentum. You prove to yourself that you can follow through. The confidence compounds. By the time I got to loop #15, I was knocking them out in minutes. Things that had been sitting for months were getting handled in one sitting.

Not because the tasks got easier. Because I got better at closing loops.

The Torch in the Darkness

There's a story that stuck with me: A man and his son broke down on a pitch-black highway. They had to walk to a phone to call for help. The son grabbed a torch and tried to shine it into the darkness ahead. But the beam barely lit anything. Frustrated, he said: "Dad, this is useless. I can't see anything with this thing." His dad took the torch, pointed it at the ground right in front of them, and said:

"You don't need to see a mile up the road. Just one foot in front of the other. So long as you see enough to do that, you'll be okay."

You don't need to fix your whole life right now. You don't need to close all 23 loops at once. Just close one. Then another. Then another. One foot in front of the other.

The Loops Never End (And That's Okay)

Here's the truth nobody tells you: the loops never fully stop. Every week, new ones appear. New bills. New decisions. New tasks. New uncomfortable conversations. But here's what changes: you get better at closing them before they pile up. You stop letting things sit. You handle small loops immediately before they become big ones. You build a habit of closing instead of accumulating. There's a quote that reframed this for me:

"For a long time, it seemed to me that life was about to begin. Real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first. Some unfinished business. Time still to be served. A debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life."

The loops aren't preventing you from living. They are your life. So you can either keep accumulating them, carrying invisible weight that drains you daily. Or you can start closing them, one at a time, and reclaim the energy that's already yours.

Your Turn

Right now, open your notes app. Write down three open loops you've been carrying. Pick the one that makes you most uncomfortable. And close it today. Not tomorrow. Not when you "feel ready." Today. Because the energy you're bleeding into that loop? You could be using it to actually live. I closed 23 loops over two weeks. The energy I got back felt like waking up from a fog I didn't know I was in. What's the first loop you're going to close? Peace.