Open loop

What is an open loop? Meaning and definition

An open loop is an unfinished commitment, question or decision that's still waiting to be resolved. People also call it a loose end.

Picture lying in bed at the end of a full day. There's a permission slip in a school bag, a family birthday next week, a car service you meant to book and the question of what's for dinner tomorrow. None of them is urgent, but each one comes round again, like a browser tab your mind can't close.

The term is common in productivity writing, especially around Getting Things Done. A related idea is the Zeigarnik effect, the tendency for unfinished things to stay on your mind. Some open loops are written down and some aren't, and either way they stay open until they're resolved.

Where open loops show up

You may recognise some of these:

• The same thought keeps coming back. You remember the car service in the shower, again on the way to work, and again at midnight.
• Small promises you made in passing. "I'll send you that link." "Let's catch up soon."
• Decisions you haven't made yet. Which school, which quote, whether to go to the wedding.
• Worries with no next step. Is the report good enough? Am I doing enough for my mother?
• Things you're keeping open so you won't lose them. Tabs, unread messages and photos of things to look up.

Open loops are ordinary. If your mind runs on six tracks at once, plenty of them are unavoidable, and the aim isn't to close them all.

Why does your mind keep open loops running?

Open loops often stay on your mind for practical reasons. There may be no clear next step, a decision you haven't made, or nowhere you trust to keep the thought. Interruptions leave other things half done.

Your mind may also be doing you a favour. It may keep bringing back the permission slip because it doesn't know the slip is safe anywhere else, as a way of looking after someone you care about.

So it can help to ask what a particular loop is missing: a next step, a decision or just a safe place to wait. The next section shows how to tell.

Recording an open loop vs resolving it

An open loop can be in one of three states:

• Uncaptured. The car service is only in your head, so it comes back in the shower, on the way to work and at midnight.
• Captured. "Book the car service" is written somewhere you trust. You can stop rehearsing it, and the car still needs booking.
• Resolved. The service is booked, or you've decided to leave it until spring.

Capturing helps you manage a loop, and it's a different thing from completing it. To work out what a captured loop needs, ask what would resolve it. If it's an action, like the car service, it can become a task. If it's a decision, like which school, it needs a time to decide. If it's a worry with nothing to do yet, like whether the report is good enough, it may be fine to leave it written down and read it back at your next tidy-up.

How to capture and tidy up your open loops

The examples are shown in Xale, and each one ends with how to do the same thing in other apps.

Map your open loops, find duplicates and prioritise

Try this when your head feels full, and you'd like to see everything in one place.

1. Start a new Mindmap, and name the middle "What's still open".
2. Press Tab to add a branch and Enter to add another beside it. Use one branch for each part of your life, and type the loops that belong there.
3. Look for the same worry appearing in two places, and give it one branch of its own. Two loops may turn out to be a single question.
4. Drag what matters most to the top of each branch.
5. Turn some of them into tasks. Right-click a next step and choose Make task, and the task remembers which map it came from. The rest can stay on the map, still open and now in view.

In other apps: MindMeister, XMind or Miro all work, and so does a sheet of paper with a circle in the middle.

Reflect on why your open loops bother you

Try this when your loops are written down, and something about them still doesn't feel settled.

1. Open a new Note, and give it a plain title, such as "Open loops".
2. List what's open. You can paste it in from your map.
3. Underneath, write about what bothers you about having them open. It might be the fear of forgetting, of letting someone down, or just the noise.
4. Write what it feels like when you've cleared your head, even for an evening.
5. If a regular tidy-up sounds like it would help, write a line for it, such as "Mental tidy-up". Select the words and press Make habit on the toolbar. The habit keeps a link back to this note.

In other apps: use any page in Apple Notes, Evernote or OneNote, or a sheet of paper you'll keep.

Set how often you tidy up your mind

Try this when your loops keep building up, and you'd like a regular time to get them out of your head.

1. Open Habits, and open the habit you made from your note. If you skipped that step, press New habit.
2. Set how often to Per week, and choose a number, such as three. There's no fixed repetition, so you can do it on whichever days suit you.
3. In Description, write what a session involves, such as "Ten minutes with my map. Add what's new, and cross off what's done."
4. It appears beside your day as a suggestion. If you miss one, nothing happens.

In other apps: add a repeating reminder, or tie it to something you already do, like a Sunday cup of tea.

Put your tidy-up sessions on the calendar

Try this when a habit on its own keeps slipping, and you'd like it to have a real place in your week.

1. Open Day, and find a free moment, such as the end of the working day.
2. Drag your tidy-up habit from the tray to that time. Drag the block's bottom edge to match how long you'd like.
3. If you use Xale Pro with Google Calendar, open the block's menu and choose Send to Google Calendar, so that it appears there too.
4. If the day changes, move the block. Anything that doesn't happen just fades.

In other apps: add a short repeating event to Google Calendar or Outlook.

How to work with your open loops

• Notice which ones keep coming back. A thought that returns three times probably wants a next step, or a decision to leave it.
• Capture it when it arrives. A loop written down in ten seconds doesn't have to be carried until evening.
• Choose one place to look. Loops get louder when they're scattered, so keep them where you'll trust yourself to look again.
• Close some on purpose. "I'm not going to the wedding" closes a loop as well as any finished task.

Prompts to try with an AI assistant

Paste these into Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, and fill in the brackets.

Find the same worry written twice

Here's everything still open in my head: [write it all out, as messy as you like]. Group what you see, and point out anything that looks like the same worry written in different ways. Then ask me one question at a time to find out which of these wants a next step.

Find the next step for one open loop

This keeps coming back to me: [the thought]. Help me work out whether it's a task, a decision or a worry with no action yet. If there's a next step, help me word it in under ten words.

Open loops: common questions

What does closing the loop mean? At work, it usually means letting people know how something ended, so that nobody's left wondering. For your own open loops, it means finishing the thing, deciding not to, or giving it a place where you'll find it again.

Is an open loop the same as a task? Not always. A task has a clear next step. An open loop can be a worry, a half-made decision or something you said in passing. Some open loops become tasks once you've written them down.

How is an open loop related to the Zeigarnik effect? The Zeigarnik effect is the tendency for unfinished things to stay on your mind more than finished ones, named after the psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik. An open loop is the unfinished thing itself.

Does writing something down close an open loop? No. Writing it down captures it, and it stays open until it's finished or you've decided to drop it. Capturing can still quieten it, because your head is no longer the only place keeping it.

What's the difference between open loops and cognitive load? Cognitive load is how much your mind is holding at once. Open loops are one of the things it may be holding.

What's another word for an open loop? People also say loose ends or unfinished business. The Zeigarnik effect is a related idea, not another name.

Related topics

• Capture them with Brain dump, Mind sweep or Quick capture.
• Compare with Cognitive load: how much your mind is holding, of which open loops are one part.
• Compare with Working memory: what you can hold in mind right now.
• Compare with Mental load: the work of remembering and coordinating for other people too.
• Read why writing things down helps in Cognitive offloading.