There are many reasons folks are feeling drained these days – poor sleep, health issues, financial stress, job-related burnout and exposure to so many distressing events in the news, among others. But there’s one smaller, more insidious factor that may be weighing you down more than you realise: all of your “open loops”.

If you’re not familiar with the term, open loops refer to a type of mental clutter made up of various unfinished tasks and other loose ends.

Think: phone calls you haven’t returned, emails or texts you haven’t replied to, appointments you’ve been putting off, conversations you’ve been avoiding, packages you need to send back, subscriptions you need to cancel or other pending items on your to-do list.

All of these open loops occupy space in your brain, nagging at you and draining you of your energy.

This may be explained by something called the Zeigarnik Effect, named after psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik, which says that humans have a tendency to remember uncompleted tasks much better than completed ones. This makes sense as it helps us get things done, health podcaster Liz Moody explained on a recent episode of the Liz Moody Podcast.

When we finish a task, “we close the loop in our brains that’s keeping track of the important aspects of that task that we need to remember in order to complete it successfully,” she said in the episode.

But when the loops are left open, it “creates a state of heightened mental tension that acts like a mental placeholder, keeping whatever task is at play active in our working memory,” Moody continued. “If we have dozens of unfinished tasks just piling up, we are just piling on that tension. We are upping our cognitive load and we are leading to this huge state of mental exhaustion.”

Not only that, certain unfinished tasks can also create shame that affects our self-esteem. For example, you might generally think of yourself as a good friend, but you’ve been avoiding reaching out to someone important in your life, said psychologist Lee Chambers, founder of Male Allies UK.

“You now see yourself as a bad friend, and that might be more draining than the task itself,” he told HuffPost.

We asked experts for advice on how to do a better job of closing loops so we can regain some clarity, focus, energy and a sense of agency over our lives. Read on for their tips:

Write them down

Start with a brain dump: Make a list of all the open loops swirling around in your mind.

“Just having them in my notebook means I have more space, as I’m not juggling them all in my head,” Chambers said. “Then I can write next to them: What’s the first action I should take to start closing? And by writing the action, I’m committing to doing something.”

Break down bigger tasks into smaller steps

Larger tasks or projects that can’t be completed in one sitting have a way of lingering on your to-do list for far too long. This can “feel like a perpetual open loop that you’re always ‘working on,’” productivity........

© HuffPost