The Zeigarnik Effect (The Open Loop Technique)

You're listening to Podiatry Marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Welcome to Podiatry Marketing. I'm your host, Jim McDannald, joined by always Tyson Franklin. How's it going, Tyson?

I'm good, big Jim. How are you doing?

Things are good. Things are good here in Montreal. Loving life. No no complaints on my side.

Yeah. And say they shouldn't be. Life is good. I always tell people that life is good. It's I was talking to someone earlier today, and we were talking about how you can sometimes get a bit down or you might have that patient, you know, it could be the first or second patient in the morning, and they do something.

They get under your skin, and some people will let that ruin their whole day. And they'll actually say, oh, that patient has ruined my whole day. And I'm thinking, well, you actually have the choice to let that patient ruin your whole day, or you can decide to not let them ruin your whole day. So a while back, someone said, mate, let them ruin your day for half an hour to give yourself half an hour to be really annoyed, throw things around, have a tantrum, have a bit of a soak, get the tissue, and then just go bang, and then just get on with it because the rest of your patients deserve you to be at your best.

I think that's a good attitude and a good mindset. That's similar to what I used to my dad used to give me some advice after a bad race. You know, you can be mad at yourself for a couple hours after your bad race, but then it's off to the next thing, or you can't just you can't focus on that or just gonna take things over. So I like I like that advice.

Yeah. And they say that it's about elite athletes in all areas. Doesn't matter what they're doing. They can take the loss, take it on board, and be upset about it for a very short period of time, and then they just move on. Okay.

I gotta start training again. Whereas some I was actually watching the LFA last night, which is like a a cage fighting competition. And there was a guy, debut fight. It's his first professional fight. And when they came out to shake gloves to touch gloves, the other guy who was more experienced had a few fights already and was undefeated.

So this amateur who's now a pro comes out there. You can see he just had this attitude and his swagger in his walk. When it came to touching gloves, he wouldn't touch the other person's gloves. And he was also the favorite to win based on all his amateur fights. Anyway, he got smoked.

He got choked out in the first round and lost. He was so shitty. Yeah. Normally, that happens, the ref breaks it up. They celebrate with the team, then they both come over and they sort of, like, hug each other.

Not refused. In fact, he just wanted to start throwing punches again. And even when the ref was holding the hand up, he he refused to acknowledge the other guy. Just had I was soaking so much, and I went, wow. That was really this is a professional fight thing that you're in.

That was very unprofessional. And and if I was an outside organization looking in and looking at that person, I'd be like, no. Wouldn't sign him up. Don't need that attitude in our organization. So has nothing to do with what we're talking about today.

No. It doesn't have anything to do, but I think it's fun to get these little anecdotes and kind of see it. The listeners can hear how we address certain problems when things come up, and maybe they can, you know, take it or leave it if that's something they wanna kinda institute into their own practice or their own lives. So, no, I I love hearing these stories, but

Well, I think it's important. How you how you work day to day and how you deal with certain situations, you realize it's not just you dealing with it. Your team are are watching you. So if you want your team to perform at the best, you can't be kicking things around and and slamming doors and having a big sulk because then your whole team says, oh, yeah. It's having a hissy fit again.

And no one wants to be around that.

No. For certain. Not not at all. So but back back to the the the what we're talking about today. What's what's the topic for the topic du jour?

The topic today is called the open loop technique. And I'm gonna read something here so I don't get it wrong. And the phenomenon of the open loop was first discovered by a psychologist and a psychiatrist as well, doctor Bloomer Zeigarnik. Yeah. Bloomer Zeigarnik.

And she discovered what is now known as a Zeigarnik effect, which is the open loop. And it's a tendency for our brain to sort of remember and focus on incomplete tasks more than it does on complete tasks, which sounds sounds bizarre that so if there's a certain task or something that's happened and it's incomplete, it it it bugs with us. It actually creates anxiety. And copywriters, and especially Hollywood TV And TV Writers, have been doing this to us for years, and we don't even know that it's been happening. You would understand what I'm talking about.

Yeah. So like some so like cliffhangers kinda like leaving things, you know, an emotional unemotional moment, and we wanna know what happens next. Right? So, yeah, I can I I definitely know those open loops?

Yeah. You'll be watching a new TV series. It might be one, two, three seasons in. And sometimes, a a season will finish, and you'll go, oh, I wonder if there's gonna be a fourth season. And you could sort of think about what happened in that last episode, and if everything's been closed off, if Mary married Bobby and Dingo got out of prison and and they saved the dog didn't die and it saved, and Johnny who had the heart attack survived it at the last minute, and that plane that crashed, everybody walked away unscathed.

If every story has been closed, then you can pretty well say there isn't gonna be another season. Without even googling it, you just know there isn't gonna be another season. However, if there's a major cliffhanger where little Johnny's hanging onto a branch on the side of a cliff and all that, and it goes and it just ends there. You're like, does he fall or doesn't he fall? What what happens?

And that that anxiety that builds up within us, we want to know. We will tune in next week for next week's episode to find out, does Johnny, who's the star of the show, fall off a cliff? Unlikely he will, but every now and then, it does happen. So copywriters, Hollywood, they've been doing to this their whole life, pretty much.

So so taking this back to podiatry, what what kind of open loops do you see within the profession, within working with patients? What what are some some opportunities or some examples you can share?

I reckon one of the biggest things is and this is where I feel new graduates or if you've employed somebody new, where they make their biggest mistake, is the patient comes in, they've got problem x, and the podiatrist, with all their knowledge, gives them everything. Just dumps every instruction, exercise, bit of information about gives them handouts. Just the patient walks out, and they couldn't possibly have a question because they have been told everything. They might walk out totally confused, but they've given them absolutely everything, and there's no reason for that patient to come back because what are you gonna do with it, what are gonna tell them next because you've already told them everything. And whereas I think the better approach is a patient comes in with problem x, and there might be five things you want them to do.

And you can actually say to the patient, there's five things that we need to address with this particular problem. I'm gonna show you the first two today, and you show them the first two. Again, I'm gonna get back next week. We'll see how that's going. And when you come back, we'll talk about the the next three steps.

The patient's like, oh. I've now created curiosity. They're wondering what are the next steps because people don't like missing out.

No. For sure. They don't wanna miss out, but I think there's also a benefit to this system or, you know, the way you communicate this to patients where you're not overloading them as well. Right? It's kind of a stepwise process.

It's Yeah. It's this thing, this thing. If you if you like you said, if you tell them everything on the first visit, it's all gonna be this way or you just dump everything onto them that first visit, it can be a bit overwhelming for the patient, not only just like, you know, cognitively trying to figure out what's going on with their diagnosis, but then now they have all these tasks that you assign them to do. And maybe they weren't ready for that, but also it may not be as effective. Right?

We don't know, you know, if an injection is gonna work for one person here and then an orthodox is gonna work for another person here. There's no cookie cutter recipe to what we're doing. So this kind of stepwise or this, you you know, this open loop provides kind of them to remake kind of you to build trust over time with the patient as well to make sure that you're exploring all the different options they have for their care.

Yeah. And it's probably to think of it, we've all been at a conference or an event, maybe it was a business type event. And as you go into the break, the speaker will say, oh, by the way, when you come back, I'm gonna show you the seven ways to do such as all the 10 best ways to do this with your patients. So when you're during the break, you go, oh, I can't wait to get back in there and find about the seven ways or the 10 tips for doing certain things. It's it's happened to us throughout our whole life, and you gotta realize that if you were going out on that break and you said, oh, and by the way, before you here's a sheet with the ten ten tips that you need to do with your patients.

You go out there, you go, oh, I've I've got the 10 tips. I'm gonna extend my lunch break. I'll come in late. So there's there's not the curiosity or reason to sort of come back. And I think with your patients, you could give them a list of the five ways to treat problem x.

If they've got those five ways in front of them, and you even if you only do one way today or two ways if they already know what the other three are, well, there's there's no curiosity on coming back. But if you tell them there's five, give them two, and they say, when you come back, I'll explain the rest. Win, lose, or draw with however the treatment went, they are gonna wanna come back to know and get more information.

I think that's an excellent point. I think it's like you said, it's kinda like tapping into human psychology at the same time. Right? If we just give away all this information upfront, you know, they're gonna be buried in it. It's not gonna seem as important.

But just how you communicate or the order in which you can communicate with the patients has a huge impact. It seems like a little thing on the surface, but from a like a human psychology perspective, it's gonna make that feel more important or more memorable to them and will allow you to connect to help them more just by changing the order or dosing out smaller bite sized chunks of information in a way that, like you said, kind of makes them curious, but also helps them, you know, be more intentional or remember kind of what you said.

Yeah. And you can combine on previous episodes, we've talked about storytelling and micro storytelling. Dave Freeze, a friend of mine, he does this better than anybody else. He will say, oh, there's four things that we're gonna cover this morning in today's section, and he'll cover the first one. He'll cover the second one.

He'll cover the third one, and then he breaks off into a story, and he never gets to the fourth one. Just never gets to it that we finish that session, and all of sudden, you look at your notes later. One, two, three. Wait. There was four.

He said there were four. He's only ever given me three. And then later that day, or it could be the next day, he'd go, oh, by the way, yesterday, I was gonna tell you the four ways of doing such and such. First way is this. Second, number three, he goes, man, remember the story I told you?

He goes, can you tell me and he'll ask us questions about that particular story. What color shirt was the person wearing? What where was the where was the fireplace located? What did the guy in the green suit have in his hand? And all of a sudden, we're recalling all these points.

And and they reckon this is part of the whole psychology of it all, is when you leave something open, you're more curious about it, so you retain that information. And it's the information he shared was quite important, then he tells the full time. And you go, oh, oh, finally. Thank you. So the longer and he does this constantly where he does it's one open loop after another open loop after another open loop.

He does this to us for two days solid. And then on the third day, he closes all the loops. But when he closes the loops, we actually remember the information. So if you're talking to a patient, you get five ways to do this. One, two, story.

Never get to the rest. Book them back in. They're gonna go, hang on. When they come and go, oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you three, four, and five. Patient goes, yeah.

Actually, I I I recall that. I go, remember when we did the second point? Do you remember what you had to do? They will recall the steps because it's just the way that our brain's wired that we just we remember things when we when we're sort of there's a they reckon it creates anxiety when there's a gap between what we know and what we want to know.

Right.

So when we know that, oh, there's other stuff we know that we wanna know, it it creates this anxiety, and we won't be fulfilled until we actually get that information.

Yeah. Us us humans are interesting creatures. Right? We just Oh, we're nuts. We it's it's like we want the, you know, the one hand, you know, the bird in one hand or two in the bush.

We always wanna go for that like two in the bush. Right? It's like

I wanna know what's in there.

It's like that that next adventure, the next thing, the next vacation, the next, you know, we're always jumping ahead and by kinda like, you know, utilizing that aspect of human behavior. I think, like you said, you can make it more memorable. You can make a bigger impact on the patient with communicating in that fashion.

Yeah. And I I think another way that you can actually use it in podiatry, you might write a blog article. And we have a couple of ideas for a blog article. It might be the 10 best ways to prevent heel pain on your next holiday. Give them five.

You're gonna have 10 things. You might get five, and that might be part one. Tune in next month's article. I'll explain the next five. So the people like the first five, they're coming back to listen to the next five.

It's no different to some of the podcast episodes I've done on podiatry legends where I have had someone we've spoken for quite a long period of time, so I've split it into two. And both episodes usually do quite well. And when I look at because a lot of times, I can look at stats the same as we do on this show, and you can see which countries they come from. When you look at the actual stats itself from the countries and then you look at part two, you almost see it's identical because the people that saw this one want to get the second part of it. It's it's quite interesting.

So I think you can do it with blog articles. You can do it when you're explaining instructions. Is anything that you're communicating some form of information, just hold back a little bit and don't close the conversation. Don't close the loop every single time. Well, there's nothing for him to come back for.

I think that's difficult. I think especially when you're new into practice. Right? You're kind of you you feel like you should prove yourself. And and since there's no more no more attending, no more no more co resident to impress or, you know, you're not at a conference presenting or something.

You're sitting now in front of someone that may not that who definitely doesn't have the same level of foot and ankle care knowledge as you do. And you wanna, like, you know, be trust show them that you're trustworthy, that you're skilled. You might be new, but you have the skills to help them out. And like you said, you gotta, like, find ways of communicating, parsing out that information that will not only, like, will they retain, but just but it's in small enough bite sized chunks where it's just not, like, overwhelming the patients. I think, you know, when you tap into this open loop, there there's kind of multiple benefits of this kind of way of communicating with with your patients for sure.

Yeah. And it it makes it interesting for the patient. It also makes it interesting for yourself. And but there's no way you'll you'll pick up a book and you'll read half a book and not finish it. Or go into a movie and watch half a movie and get, yeah, it'll leave.

I got an idea of what'll happen, and you leave. And it's the same. I remember watching this on the Big Bang Theory, and I'm pretty sure this is what they're talking about, where Sheldon always needed closure on everything. He could not leave. If you left an open loop with him, he would go nuts.

And he's going, that's not true. So they went, and they just walked out of the room. And he just he had to go, boom boom. Had to finish off those last two things. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?

Yeah. Yeah. So it's always, yeah, so they would walk past him and go, and he couldn't help himself. Yeah. Boom boom.

So we we are just wired to finish things off, to want to have things that have closure, to know what the information is. That's why when you see, say, magazine articles or, like, a magazine cover, it'll go, the seven secrets too. I'm like, oh. It's just you're you're curious. So this curiosity of of gathering information, everybody has it.

Your patients have it. So don't just don't give them everything. Give them enough to keep them curious to coming back. And if you do that over a period of time, one that you're gonna get a lot better results with your patients as well.

No. I think there's definitely some some learnings there by this form of communication. I definitely like those examples. It definitely is something that I, you know I think once once you, you know, learn form different forms of communication, something you're always kinda finding, what is that way to approach a patient that's gonna deliver the most impact, you know, not only for their care, but just for you as in your private practice. I think that's a a great technique and a great kind of way to, you know, like I parse out that information patients in a in kind of a bite sized chunks that, you know, keeps their interest and, you know, makes things resonate with them as opposed to just kind of dumping tons of information on them that's not gonna, you know they're gonna forget it tomorrow.

So

And some podiatrists, and I may think, oh, but isn't this being, you know, manipulative that you're trying to manipulate them to come back and do certain things? Yes. But all communication has some form of manipulation in it. And some people go, oh, no. I never manipulate anyone.

I always say, have, you know, have you ever told anybody a joke? If they go, yes. Did they laugh? Yes. You manipulated them.

You did something to get a reaction out of them. So telling a joke made them laugh. That was what you were trying to do. You manipulated the situation. This is no different.

So people there's there's difference between yeah. It's it's your intent, which is the important part. If you're trying to manipulate people for evil, like chaos, remember Get Smart? Do you watch Get Smart on TV? Yeah.

So you can either be you can either use your powers for good or evil. So if you're if you're using forms of manipulation but with good intent, there's nothing wrong with it. If you're doing it for an evil intent or you're trying to con somebody into something, then no. You shouldn't be doing it.

For certain. For certain.

Yeah. And that's that's the part when it comes to communication or getting better at communicating with patients and people in general that yeah. But not just podiatrists, some people put these, like, walls up that they don't wanna learn anymore because they think they're trying to harm people. Only bad people harm people. Good people will never harm people.

No matter what they read and what they learn, they will only ever use it for good good intentions.

No. That's well put. I definitely think that there's, you know, we get so, you know, used to practicing our skills, you know, being a good surgeon or a good clinician, But, you know, boning up on, you know, solid communication skills, whether it be, you know, verbal or nonverbal is something that I think a lot of people in practice, you know. Either, you know, either you're born with it or you you practice it in some other way leading in into, you know, being a clinician. But if if people haven't done it in the in the, you know, in their past or have a lot of practice, I think that's something that a lot of podiatrists can can improve on.

And it really benefits not only yourself, but also your patients when you can have, you know, clear communication and ways to, like I said, help them receive the best care.

Yeah. So, Jim, I have nothing else on this topic to talk about. Oh, we can talk for hours. Well, I want.

Well, I think that was a great sum up of open loops, Tyson. Thanks for that. And just wanna make sure that everyone that's, you know, listening today, make sure you go to iTunes or Spotify, subscribe to podiatry marketing. We we're really enjoying doing the show for you guys. If you have, you know, questions, feel free to, you know, head over to our website podiatry.marketing.

Fill out a form. Let us know some topics you think would be interesting for the show. But thanks again, Tyson, for today and your discussion on open loops, and I'll talk to you soon.

No. It's been great. And are we gonna mention anything about an upcoming conference that we're gonna do? Should we start I think Should we start dropping hints that this is coming up in October?

Yeah. You can give a little hand, I guess, right now if you'd like.

Okay. So Jim and I are getting together. We're putting our heads together, and we're gonna be doing a workshop, a marketing workshop in Chicago. That is the plan in October. We we'll have dates.

When we get the dates, we'll start pushing it all out on social media everywhere and also on the podiatry marketing website.

Yep. Should be good. I'm excited to to plan this with you and meet up in Chicago for a fun weekend of marketing and and meeting some some of our listeners in real life. So it'll be a lot of fun.

It's gone. It's just gonna be it'll be a lot of fun. Jim, I will make you have a lot of fun.

I'm not too worried. Chicago is my kind of town. I lived there for four years, so I'm sure we can get into some trouble together.

Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. Okay. Jim is I I will talk again next week. Bye.

Sounds good, Tyson. Bye.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim Mcdonald. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.