The load we create and allow

If you or your team are still having back-to-back meetings throughout the day, stop! Please?

The blend of one meeting into the next does nothing for cognitive load coping. Our overload stays in overload because there’s no chance to ... unload. 

That means when you want to get great ideas and contributions from the team, they won’t have them. 

When you want them to work on planning, collaborating or decision-making, they won’t have the space and attention for it. 

We may think people are disconnected or disengaged when they could be cognitively overloaded.

For clearer and fresher thinking, invite, welcome and encourage breaks between (and within) meetings. 

Even a few minutes makes a difference. 

Create a break:
⏰ Start meetings off the hour at 10 past. 
⏰ Finish meetings prior to the hour. 

Working back-to-back isn’t smarter, particularly when you’re already overloaded. 

It might feel busy and important. 

Instead, it’s overloading the system... our system. Us. 

Overwhelmed with options

There always seems so much to do. So many possibilities, options and combinations. 

And we get overwhelmed. 

Until we capture or map those options, they swirl about in our minds, taking up valuable space and attention. 

Clear thinking gets blocked, doubt is created when we’d prefer decisiveness and we slow to a crawl (or stop) in terms of speed. 

When you’ve made decisions in the past, you would have weighed up the options... possibly writing things down on a list of + and - or pros and cons. 

This action externalises the information, taking it out of our brain and into another source: like a note pad, a spreadsheet, an app. 

The ‘emptying’ of our mind is a deliberate technique we can use - and more frequently - to prevent our everyday information overload.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you can soak it all up or keep it all in your head. 

The less on your mind, the more you can be here, present for people, a conversation, deep thinking or that all-important decision. 

Empty your mind and get the options down anytime you like!

Then we get to enjoy a clean slate ... ready for the next round of incoming information. 

Signposts and waypoints

As we deal with increasing amounts and complexity of information, it’s worth remembering a golden rule: people may not be as interested in your stuff as you are. 

That means they won’t work too hard to process it, organize it or make sense of it. 

They’ve got other things on their mind, better things to do, little space to take more on. They’ve got even less capacity for poorly arranged information. 

During an online event recently, I was overwhelmed with the lack of structure in presentations. 

Overwhelmed because it became a dump of information, a series of points that were disconnected, unrelated and in no sequence, theme or logical order. 

Not everything can be important. We can’t take it all in, all at once. 

Just as we can’t complete a journey in one step, delivering information requires a step by step or chunk by chunk approach.

Waypoints and signposts can help. 

📌 Waypoints where you stop or pause along the way. 
➡️ Signposts that guide people along. 

Otherwise it’s just a dump. 

Look out for your own overload

In a day full of meetings, calls, work and learning ... information overload can really come for us. That overload feeling doesn’t always hit with the same speed or intensity though.

There are different types:

- Lookout for the slow creeper.

The cumulative effect of overload builds up during the day. With no break between meetings, we keep loading up! We’ll be full soon and no more will fit in. It hits at about 4pm!

- Lookout for the fast flier. When a topic, meeting or presentation hits us and we’re done, overloaded. Too many slides, too much too soon, so complicated. Boom! Full.

Both situations need not be a surprise to us. We don’t have to be caught out or shocked that we become overloaded. It happens slowly or rapidly; and we can always be prepared for it.

A powerful way to manage load is to ‘empty the truck’. Rather than trying to carry all the information yourself, externalise it. Get it out of your head and into something else ... onto a page or into a notes file.

Our days of ‘I’m here soaking it all up’ are done. It’s simply not an efficient way for us to work with information. Save the soaking for baths, movies, socializing and relaxing. Aaaah!

Lighten the online meeting load

After so many online meetings Urgh! We’re foggy, brain-fried ... like we’re in a continuous conference.

This is the human experience of cognitive overload. But it’s exacerbated and multiplied by the load that’s coming via one channel - online. Yes, its different to face to face, next to each other, same room or space.

Here are 3 COGNITIVE LOAD COPING habits:

☀️Change state and break.

Take a short break between every meeting. Yes every one. It ‘releases’ the mental load you’ve been carrying. Like emptying a truck’s load. Don’t do back-to-back. Bad. Just 30 seconds, get up, move and BREAK your state.

☀️Stop soaking information and start sensemaking.

In every meeting, WRITE some handwritten notes. Not typed. Hand written. This is ‘externalizing’ information. It actively relieves those fried feels.

☀️Write down more than a meeting’s end points, actions or decisions.

Catch a quotable quote, a smile moment, a PHRASE that sounded good. This helps retain some focus.

And it’s ok... you’re not failing.

We’re all carrying around a huge concrete slab of shock, change, worry and uncertainty. That’s already some heavy stuff.

Break your state

Write it down

Catch a phrase