Why a to-do list feels so darn good

This interesting article from BBC News by Tom Stafford focuses mainly on the Getting Things Done system (which a lot of people love -- but many find overwhelming and difficult to maintain).  The most interesting bit in this article, though, is the following research tidbit about why unfinished tasks needle us & what to do about it:

"People did worse on a brainstorming task when they were prevented from finishing a simple warm-up task – because the warm-up task was stuck in their active memory. What Baumeister and Masicampo did next is the interesting thing; they allowed some people to make plans to finish the warm-up task. They weren't allowed to finish it, just to make plans on how they'd finish it. Sure enough, those people allowed to make plans were freed from the distracting effect of leaving the warm-up task unfinished."

<reposted from the old OnTrack Academic News Feed>