Overloaded before we start work

Most of us have experienced the feelings of overwhelm and information overload ... just thinking about our 'to do’ list can cue overwhelm.

A group I worked with last week, (boosting cognitive load coping skills + how to deal with information overload) explained how they listen to podcasts, audio books, interviews and radio programs on their daily commutes to work.

There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s entertaining and educational and a great use of time.

What we need to be aware of is how we fill up our sponge or tank with content and information that we absorb, synthesize and digest. Because then we arrive at work and are faced with even more content and information to absorb, synthesize and digest!

Aargh!

No wonder overload comes a’ knocking!

Cognitive overload happens rapidly or g-r-a-d-u-a-l-l-y. It's possible we could be overloaded before the work day begins, or soon after we get started at work.

Our indicator rises to ‘full’; there's just no capacity to add much more.

An answer? Allow a buffer, like half-time in a sporting event. Allow neutral time where you’re taking in nothing. Nothing. It helps "release the load".

Coping with information overload

A Time Inc article suggests modern psychologists and neurologists have found more reasons why we dream. Using PET scans and MRI imaging they’ve discovered what our brain is trying to do - after a full day’s work of overwhelming meetings and information dumps.

While we’re asleep, dreaming is the brain’s way of deleting or ‘dumping excess data’. Our brain is kind of taking out the trash, but it’s also ‘consolidating important information’.

The categorizing, sorting and processing that's going on in dreaming is epic!

So how in our waking hours could we also DUMP the meaningless and CACHE the valuable stuff?

If we’re doing it automatically, unconsciously while we sleep, imagine if we did more of this while we're awake and working, collaborating and problem solving. Imagine our performance lift!

I’m not suggesting you nod off right now, trying to make sense of that meeting you were just in, but hey, some businesses do support power napping!

Rather, try using my 'CCC' technique:

- Categorize

- Consolidate and then

- Clear ... throughout the day. I

t's a much smarter way to work when overloaded. Why wait until bed time.

TL; DR 'Too long; didn’t read'

We’re drowning in it! Information overload from packs, keynotes, talks, sessions, webinars, meetings, presentations, conversations aarrrggh NOT TO MENTION OUR OWN THOUGHTS and Netflix binges, podcasts, audio books, Spotify playlists oh and pretty journals.

How do we take in more ...or just make better, quicker sense of things?

If you move from a mess to a list, to a pack, to a pic... all of these have pros and cons but the one that wins the race, the journey, the transformation is… the MAP.

We already enjoy a daily use of maps:

• Where is my food delivery?
• Why did the driver go down that street?
• Which is the quickest route to the cafe?

Maps have gone full circle (full globe?) from being crusty old, folded-the-wrong-way paper, to books of maps, to apps of maps. We know what maps look like and use them all the time. They guide and show us the unknown, unseen.

So it's too bad (and so silly) that more leaders don’t use maps instead of weighty wastes of slide decks that sucked weeks of time and tinkering from us. It could have all be done in 1/10th of the time, with 10x the impact ... with a map.

Do you map? Here’s one I prepared earlier :-)

The value is in the summary

You know how we zone out in meetings, get overloaded, lose focus and do other things? (We check our devices for email, social media, anything to relieve the pressure of information overload.)

What do you do to counter this situation? Most people I work with initially blame the phone or device and say things like ‘put them away’ or ‘don’t use them’.

But it’s less about the phone, more about what’s going on in our heads.

Information overload is a daily, even an hourly challenge. And most of us don’t know how to cope.

It’s called 'cognitive load coping' and we haven’t learned how to do it. So we reach for our dopamine device as relief.

Rather than punishing the person reaching for their device, make the processing of all of this information easier.

There’s are more than 32 techniques I teach in cognitive load coping.

Here’s one to use often : SUMMARY. As you go through a meeting, summarise where things are up to, what’s been done, what’s yet to do. Summarise the facts, the evidence, the opinions, the key points, the proposed solutions and the discussions so far. A summary takes little more than a minute. Less. And we don’t use them nearly enough.

How we confuse ourselves

In a meeting recently I saw a colleague write up more than 5 pages of notes. The next day they said how confused they felt about it all.

What were all the notes about then?

Sometimes we can capture content others are delivering, thinking we’re doing well, getting all of that information down. But it can end up meaning nothing to us later. We don’t seem to be able to find what the key points were or what the essence of it was.

As I chatted with my colleague later and we reviewed their notes, they were words, phrases, things underlined. These were the key things they heard. But later, none of it really made much sense. There was no synthesis, distilling, connections or conclusions. The notes were parts of sentences.

In sensemaking, it helps to pause, listen, make sense of what’s going on, and write that down. It is habit (and fear) that drives us to write it all down like a court reporter! But we don’t need to write it all.

So make sense as you go, capture information as it makes sense to you.

Go for distilling information rather than transcribing it!