Netflix can only grow by getting their users to consume more of their content. But Netflix doesn't ask you to watch a season. They never have.
All they do is ask you to click a thumbnail, then they ask you to watch 90 seconds of a trailer, then, one small ask at a time, you're four episodes deep at 1am wondering how you got there.
Great job, Netflix.
Here's why it works
In 1927, Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik noticed something strange about waiters in a Vienna café. They could recall every item from an open, unpaid tab in perfect detail. The moment the bill was settled? Gone - their brain filed it away and moved on.
Zeigarnik ran the studies, documented the pattern, and gave it a name: the Zeigarnik Effect:
Unfinished tasks occupy active mental space. Completed ones don't.
The brain is wired to finish what it starts, and Netflix builds its entire product around this. Every episode ends mid-tension. Every season finale opens a new question. The discomfort of an unresolved loop is enough to keep you watching. You think it’s because the show is just that good. Really you’re addicted to the relief of closing the loop.
Here's the catch
Most people approach their goals the way they approach a wall - they see the whole thing at once, the full height, the distance to the top, and they don't start. And how can they? The wall is way too high!
The reality: The goal isn't too hard, the starting point is just too large.
The operator who actually builds things has figured out the same trick Netflix figured out: You don't attack the goal, you open a loop.
Reframe the task in your head so that it’s easier to start. You don’t need to write a report, you only need to write one paragraph. If that’s too hard, you only need to write one sentence, one sent email, one line of code. This one thing doesn’t matter much on its own, but a started task creates the neurological pull to finish it.
What most people don’t realize is momentum isn't motivation - it's a biological response to an open loop.
So stop trying to summon the discipline to tackle the whole thing. Open a loop instead, and your brain will handle the rest. It was designed to.