why can't students finish books?

Last month, my sister called me crying.

Her son Arjun had just failed his 12th mock exams.

When I went to their house in Noida, I expected to find him devastated.
Instead, I found him on the couch, watching Naruto on his phone.

"Arjun, beta, what happened?"

He didn't look up.
"Just one more episode, Mama."

That's when I noticed the Netflix "Continue Watching" section on the TV.
Peaky Blinders. Breaking Bad. Money Heist. Attack on Titan.

My sister showed me his screen time report later.
6 hours and 47 minutes daily. Average.

AND she also showed me his Kindle app.
The same NCERT physics book he'd bought digitally in July. Still on chapter 2.

Arjun had 6 hours and 47 minutes daily.
He chose to spend them finishing 720 episodes while his physics textbook gathered dust on chapter 2.

That night, I couldn't stop thinking: What is it about streaming that hijacks completion, while books and studies get abandoned?

Kurt Lewin was eating at a restaurant when he noticed something strange about the waiter.

The man remembered complex orders perfectly.
Multiple tables. Specific modifications. No notepad.

Then the bill got paid.

Two minutes later, the waiter couldn't remember what anyone had ordered.

Lewin's student, Bluma Zeigarnik, designed experiments to test this.

She gave 164 people 18 to 22 different tasks.
Interrupted half of them mid-task.

One hour later, people remembered the interrupted tasks 90% better.

She published this in 1927.

Your brain creates tension when you start something.

That tension doesn't release until you finish.

What Zeigarnik discovered in a Berlin café, Netflix turned into a billion-dollar business model.

Here's what I realized watching Arjun that night.

The NCERT book required him to close it, put it down, sleep, wake up, find it, open to the right page, remember where he left off, and then start reading again.

Seven friction points.

Seven opportunities for his brain to choose something else.

Netflix? The next episode auto-plays in 5 seconds.

A 2024 study from University of Chicago tested what happens when you disable autoplay. People watched 21 minutes less per day. Their viewing sessions were 18 minutes shorter.

That countdown timer is a psychological weapon disguised as convenience.

A former Netflix developer admitted it was "by far the biggest increase in hours watched of any feature we ever tested."

The Zeigarnik Effect creates the same tension for both the show and the textbook. But only one removes the friction of returning.

Arjun's brain was responding exactly as designed.

The problem was that Netflix was designing his completion loops.

His textbooks weren't.

India has 601 million people trapped in the same loop

India's OTT audience hit 601.2 million in 2025. That's 41% of our population streaming video content at least monthly.

66% of us now binge-watch for 5+ hours on weekends. Mirzapur Season 3 drew 30.8 million viewers. Panchayat Season 3 got 28.2 million.

Meanwhile, a study of Indian medical students found binge-watching causing significant effects on physical health, mental health, and academic performance. 32.6% reported psychological effects. 28% reported academic under-performance.

But here's what nobody's connecting.

The same students who can't finish a single semester's syllabus will finish an entire K-drama in a weekend.

96% of people who enroll in online courses never finish them. MIT's edX courses average 3.13% completion.

Yet cohort-based courses with live sessions? 85-90% completion.

The lectures are identical. But live sessions create smaller, more frequent tension points. Miss one and you fall behind the group. Your brain doesn't track "finish course." It tracks "show up Tuesday 8 PM."

Streaming platforms understand this. Educational content doesn't.

Building Plaksha, this hit different.

I started looking at ours and our partners’ course completion data.

The pattern was identical to Arjun's Netflix vs. textbook divide.

Self-paced courses? 12% completion.

Live cohort sessions? 93% completion.

We taught the exact material to the exact people.

The only difference was when and how they consumed it.

So we plan to run an experiment.

Instead of one big course with 40 lectures, we’ll break it into 5 micro-courses with 8 sessions each.

Smaller loops. More frequent closures.

Instead of "watch whenever," we’ll schedule live sessions.

External accountability creates completion tension.

Instead of ending sessions at natural stopping points, we’ll start ending mid-concept.

Deliberately incomplete.

Why? Because a 2021 study found people were 32% more likely to return to tasks they'd started versus tasks they hadn't begun.

Hemingway knew this 90 years ago.

He'd stop writing mid-sentence when he knew what came next.

The incomplete thought pulled him back to his desk the next morning.

It makes me think that if we start sending students back to dorms with cliffhangers instead of conclusions.

Our completion rates might just get closer to 100%.

I couldn't undo a failed exam.

But I could help him rewire his loops.

First, we disabled autoplay on every platform.

Netflix. YouTube. That 5-second countdown was making his decisions for him.

Second, we applied the Hemingway trick to his studies.

Stop mid-chapter. Stop mid-problem.

Stop when you know what comes next.

The incomplete thought would pull him back.

Third, we created external accountability.

Study group calls at fixed times.

If he missed one, he'd fall behind peers.

His brain couldn't just "continue tomorrow."

Fourth, and this was key, we stopped treating streaming as the enemy.

The Zeigarnik Effect isn't good or bad. It's a mechanism.

Netflix weaponizes it for engagement.

We could weaponize it for education.

Arjun now watches one episode as a reward after completing a study session.

But he stops mid-chapter before the episode, not after.

The incomplete textbook chapter creates tension.

The show becomes the release.

But only after progress.

Every app you use is engineering your completion loops.

Duolingo has 9 million users maintaining 365+ day streaks. Streaks increase commitment by 60%. Breaking a streak feels twice as painful as maintaining it feels good.

LinkedIn's profile completion bar increased full profiles by 55%. That "60% complete" message sits in your brain, creating tension.

Instagram Reels has 385 million users in India. Each video is an incomplete loop. You don't know what's next. So you scroll to find out.

The question isn't whether the Zeigarnik Effect controls you.

It's whether you're going to let Netflix, Instagram, and Duolingo decide which loops stay open.

Or whether you'll start opening the ones that matter.

Arjun's studying for his supplementary exams now.

His screen time is down to 2 hours.

His textbooks have bookmarks in the middle of chapters.

Nothing changed but his environment.

Hit reply and tell me: What show did you binge that you didn't mean to? And what book or course has been sitting unfinished?

I read every email.

Until next week, 
Ritesh

P.S. That autoplay countdown between episodes? You can turn it off.
Settings. Playback. Autoplay. Disable. Your brain will thank you.