In the original paper [@leroyWhyItHard2009], Dr. Leroy defines attention residue as, “the persistence of cognitive activity about a Task A even though one stopped working on Task A and currently performs a Task B.”

In other words, there is a cognitive switching cost to shifting your attention from one task to another. When your attention is shifted, there is a “residue (殘留)” that remains with the prior task and impairs your cognitive performance on the new task.

You may think your attention has fully shifted to the new task, but your brain has a lag.

Close “Open Loops” (Anything that is pulling your attention, stopping you from reaching states of flow)

Closing with (a sense of) completion

Always finish what you’ve started. Never start what you can’t finish.

Drop a task when it is only partially finished, without any good “closure”; it then either gets lost, or weighs on one’s mind and prevents one from fully thinking about something else, or has to be redone from an earlier point when one picks it up again.

There’s something magical in that last little bit, simply because so few are willing to do it. That’s where you unlock new levels to the game. And it does not take talent, just energy and courage.

Task Switching

The Zeigarnik Effect