The cost of overwhelm

When it hits you, that information overload feeling, what do you do? Panic? Get a coffee? Look at your phone?

None of these are helpful.

The feeling of overload, that ‘full sponge’ feeling isn’t pleasant.

Disengagement, distraction and withdrawal are all behaviours connected with information overload.

We try to cope. How often do we nod to say we understand something or have the information in hand, but in reality we're scrambling to catch up, struggling to stay awake or fed up with feigning interest?

Could it be career limiting if we don’t appear smart, sharp and “all over it”, having all the information under our control?

Enough.

It’s time to call out when something doesn’t make sense or the pace, quantity or style of information is overwhelming us.

It’s most likely overwhelming others too. We have a responsibility as communicators of information to guard against information overload in ourselves, and creating overwhelm for others.

We don’t need to suffer. Cognitive load coping is very much a skill for today....and the future.

The cost of confusion

How much time do we spend trying to make sense of things, re-reading, scanning, skipping through information trying to piece it all together.

While the world’s productivity gurus are keen on selling us a new app or habit, what if we looked at the cost of confusion and sought to reduce the time we spend confusing people.

Rather than acting like we’ve got it together, what if we set aside a few minutes in a meeting to make sense? What if, instead of saying ’Now, let me give you some context’ and embarking on a 15-minute explanation of the history going back to the 1900s (yes this happened recently) we asked, ‘What do you need to make sense of?’

What if we shut up first.

What if we asked them about the parts they need to make sense of.

Imagine all the unnecessary detail, the overly long ‘context’ monologues and the long-winded ‘let-me-tell-you-about-the-history-of-this-thing’ stories.

Check first. What do they need? Where is their knowledge now; where does it need to be? Don't add to the overload; make sense instead.

Q: What’s a topic you’re confused about right now? 

Deduce the meaning

When meetings and workshops get messy and don’t seem to make sense:

🌕 Clarify the Content

🌕 Traverse the Breadth

🌕 Explore the Depth.

And then… Deduce the meaning.

As you go into depth on a topic, try and get to meaning, understanding and comprehension as quickly as possible. The game is not to guess. The game or race is to meaning. The sooner you can get the meaning of things - as you progress - the better progress, the better sense you'll make.

Help people understand. Get to the meaning of what this is about.

But how would you know if it's making sense to them? You ask. Ask not 'Is this making sense?' or 'Does this make sense?' Both are tragic closed yes/no answers.

Ask 'What sense is this making right now? or 'What sense are you getting from this?' These are open questions, inviting people to make a summary of the meaning they're getting right now.

Q: How do you work out what the meaning of something is?

You don’t need to write (or type) it all

I’m talking cognitive load coping this week; how to handle all the information we’re exposed to.

The times when we need to use cognitive load coping the most include training, meetings, conferences, conversations, coaching; whenever people are thinking and talking together and information is shared.

This information can be:

🌕 written: a report, presentation or a pack of information; or

🌕 spoken: the verbal part of a presentation or conversation.

Plus our own thinking process.

We need to manage our own cognitive load better than we do.

Here’s one of the biggest tips I can give you: You don't need to write (or type) everything down. We can write or type w-a-y too much information in an attempt to ‘catch’ or ’trap' what's happening and what's being covered. But some of the information may not be ‘worth’ catching or trapping! Yet we do it. And it makes our cognitive load worse.

Notice the feeling of wanting or needing to catch and trap so much information. You don’t need it all.

Are you a catcher or 'trapper' of information? Do you want to catch it all?

The 2 things for better cognitive load management

In their prediction for the skills we’d be needing now, by 2020, the Institute for the Future identified Cognitive Load Management in the Top 10.

It's about how we cope with all that information.

But it’s not one thing; I see Cognitive Load Management involving 2 capabilities:

🔹 To discriminate + filter information for importance, and

🔸To understand how to maximize our cognitive function (using a variety of tools and techniques.)

The answer is not about having a new app to manage, store or retrieve our own information better. We need to be able to firstly identify what’s important in the information we’re exposed to. And then we need to work with our own thinking, listening and sensemaking capabilities to handle that information better than we currently do.

I’m helping teams (via 1/2 day workshops) and individuals (via 1:1 skills sessions online) to build skill and change the way they cope with information.

It could be the best value session of your development program this year - being able to handle information better. What’s that worth to you?