Persistence of unfinished tasks

I make simple mistakes at the sink: picking up the Ibuprofen rather than the bar of soap, etc. These mistakes are a windows into aspects of cognitive processing. So here was one:

In the morning I was looking at the pill bottle thinking I wanted a pain killer. But I decided I had only a mild and temporary headache, so I did not take the pill. Later in the day, going into the bathroom to wash my hands with a vague plan: "use object on back of sink", I did not pick up the soap but, rather, the pill bottle. As I reflect on this, it seems I had some residual desire to take a pill and, in the absence of clear task specification, that elevated the pill bottle to serve as the "object" in the task.

In my framework, an unfinished task is part of a narrative structure guided by Truism #7. So the above error is seen as a bi-product of the truism. This, together with the observation that the truism remains operable and persists for, at least, a day. together these gives us a sense of duration for something like a narrative truism.

The error is a small and very simple example of a "subconscious motivation". Imagine how our motivation evolves when tens, hundreds, or thousands of small sub-motivations are present in the same moment. Sure, behaviorism explains it but internal mental state is the simplest implementation of behaviorism.