Love your books and am hoping to get some more great tips on here....but I have one complaint.....or more appropriately, one request for the future. I find that blogs that don't include the full body of a message in the rss feed are a bit more painful to read than those that do. My news aggregator is the tool I use to read weblogs. I don't want to have to open up a browser to read the full message. I can understand some sites that don't do this because they need the advertising revenue from actual visits, but I don't think you are in that boat. Usually the first thing I do with RSS feed that don't include the full message is to unsubscribe. I probably won't do that here because of the potential value of the content, but it sure would be nice if the rss was complete.

Me three, on having full text available if possible. Alternatively, there is a plugin for NewsGator that I use at work called "FetchLinks" that will go out and pull down the full HTML for a blog if it chops off part of the text.

But full text or no, I'm subscribed. I'm a big fan of your book and system, David, welcome to blog-land.

David, glad to see you're using this medium as a way t reach even more people. Now that you've got a weblog, you'll see that your ideas will spread even more virulently than before!

Welcome David. I will second the request for the full feed of your article to be made available as RSS. Thanks..

David,
Excellent book, I'm reading it for the first time now. Do you have any tips for work at home sole proprietorships like myself? How about having a "plog"?

I'm trying to juggle your system using two PCs with Outlook, a Mac G3 with Entourage, and a Dell Axim V Pocket PC. The Axim doesn't interface with the Mac, though there's software out there that will enable it to do so. Even using the PCs with Outlook, I still can't sort by categories on the Pocket PC.

Bottom line: I'm looking for a new portable tool, and notice you use a Palm. Which one(s) do you recommend? And is there one that will allow me to merge entries off both Outlook and Entourage?

Does the blog/RSS cover all that appears in the newsletter or should I sign-up for both?

I am interested in setting up RSS. The servicxe I use is My Yahoo and it wants a link to an XML file. I cannot find such a thing on your site yet I see that you support RSS. How can I get access through My Yahoo?

Thought of you when I read this! --TQ

Saturday, October 01, 2005
Don't close it

Don’t stop what you're doing
In the 1920s, Bluma Zeigarnik watched a waiter taking orders in a Viennese café. The waiter could remember an elaborate order until he had delivered it, after which it vanished from memory. Zeigarnik hypothesized that people remember things that are not finished because they maintain a tension in the mind awaiting closure. Ultimately Zeigarnik proved that people remembered unfinished tasks about twice as well as completed ones.

Thus, if an instructor wants students to remember a presentation, she will end the class in mid-sentence, before drawing a final conclusion. Direct marketers use the Zeigarnik effect to whet their readers’ interest. To remember the book you’re reading, take a break in mid-chapter, not at a more natural stopping point. If you want to keep something actively in mind, don’t close it out. Let it hang.

Zone out
Exercise fanatics want to be “in the zone.” If you want to learn a lot, you’ll choose to be out of the zone. The comfort zone, that is. You can’t learn what you already know, so to maximize learning, you need to get out of your routines and encounter new and different things.

Your comfort zone contains what you know. You can’t learn what’s in there because you already have. For the moment, those chapters are closed. This is stuff you now take for granted. It’s the storehouse of patterns of thought you use to make sense of the world.

Other patterns in your head are less comforting. They are unresolved. Perhaps they are new and under evaluation. Maybe, like the orders for coffee, they are still in play, awaiting closure. Perhaps they are thought experiments (Einstein’s Gedankenexperimenten) such as what-if scenarios and imaginary prototypes. Sometimes they are things that “don’t add up,” i.e. they don’t mesh with the patterns in the comfort zone.

Learning takes place in your unresolved zone. Uncertainly engages the mind. Could ambiguity be the root of learning? Or at least an accelerant?

Are people driven to learn because we seek to perceive things as fitting our existing worldview? Is Attention Deficit Disorder fueled by the excitement of rarely closing everything? Does the Zeigarnik effect making multitasking possible? Can a lack of closure on too many fronts drive you crazy? Does it make sense for me to try to write the conclusion to my book rather than ending it abruptly in mid-sentence? Is it worth half a million

More to come...

BETA | jay 2:00 PM| WRITE JAY |

is this about education?what measures do you recommend education for all in pakistan.......

David, Excellent book. I'm not sure if you've had anyone from Indonesia comment on it but yes your GTD system has spread out here to South East Asia.

Frankly its been about a month since I've read it and what a difference it has made. I look forward to more reads from you.

Avin
Jakarta, Indonesia

Positive criticism: the rss feed lists an article as updated whenever a comment is added. As a result, the rss is really a bit of a waste of time. For example, this morning six articles are presented as new/updated since last night. I then scan those headlines and decide one by one: seen that, been there, hmm, not sure.
An rss feed without comments would be much, much more useful.

David here - Paul, there are two options - RSS 1 and RSS 2 - one without comments and the other with.

A colleague of mine turned me on to your blog and now I'm hooked.

If I may, I've just published a book that I believe you would agree maps well to what you preach to those entrepreneurs willing to listen.

It's entitled "So You Built It and They Didn't Come. Now What?" www.jackiebassett.com
Early reviews are quite good and, as you can imagine it's selling very well.

Keep up the great work & I'll definitely refer everyone I meet to your site.

All the best!

Jackie Bassett