While it's a cool read, the lack of inline citations in the article make me lose faith in it. There are some citations at the bottom, but they aren't inline wiki markup.<p>The actual effect seems to be written in the form of cause (task interruption) and effect (overestimation of time) but then takes a leap to say that the overestimation was due to frustration and failure.<p>With only two studies, and both showing different traits associated with interruption, it doesn't seem to be a universally accepted correlation.
I've posted about it a few years ago here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6689741" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6689741</a><p>original article:
<a href="http://blog.sandglaz.com/zeigarnik-effect-scientific-key-to-better-work" rel="nofollow">http://blog.sandglaz.com/zeigarnik-effect-scientific-key-to-...</a>
Financial Times > Tim Harford > Multi-tasking: how to survive in the 21st century (2015-09-03)<p>Try this:<p><a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bbf1f84a-51c2-11e5-8642-453585f2cfcd.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bbf1f84a-51c2-11e5-8642-453585f2cf...</a><p>or this:<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KxM7NvYN2REJ:www.ft.com/cms/s/2/bbf1f84a-51c2-11e5-8642-453585f2cfcd.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KxM7NvY...</a>
I shall see whether I feel compelled to read the end of this article. I got to roughly the bit where I found out what it is, the desire to complete an unfinished task.<p>If you see this before reading the article, give it a try.
User interfaces that don't provide breadcrumbs, back buttons, wizard-steps, or a means to "get back" to an initial state are said to evoke the Zeigarnik effect.