Hemingway Bridge

#203

I came across this phrase in Tiago Forte’s BASB (Building a Second Brain).

The author Ernest Hemingway, when writing, would follow this system wherein he would call it a day the moment he knew what he wanted to write next, thus creating a ‘bridge’ between the previous day and the next.

Since he already had a place to start writing from the following day, he did not have to face the fearsome blank page the next morning.

This is similar to the Zeigarnik effect I was introduced to, today (Thanks, Dad!), named after the psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.

He postulated that people tend to remember and act upon interrupted or incomplete tasks more easily than finished ones, which he identified by studying waiters who ended up remembering unpaid orders better than paid ones. No wonder Netflix makes billions off of people binging on series that deliberately end episodes on cliffhangers (e.g. Suits).

I am now yet another successful test subject of this effect, or rather, a proponent of the Hemingway Bridge, as I wrote the key points for this post right after publishing my previous post and found, to my delight, how easily I was able to complete drafting this post today.

With this newfound momentum for restarting my regular blog posts, I will now go write what I might want tomorrow’s post to be about. 

Ciao!