The Zeigarnik effect is the name given to a psychological/cognitive phenomenon whereby a person’s ability to carry out a task measurably diminishes as a result of the residual interference of an unfinished task. For me, this takes the form of: memories, words, proper nouns, metaphors, stories my daughters tell me, possible inventions, badly composed news headlines, product taglines, tacky song lyrics, or just the words I hear coming out of the mouths of people around me. But I have a countermeasure: Evernote Lists.