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 information

Have you felt it lately? 

Our sponge gets full - gradually or rapidly - and then we’re ‘done’. We can’t keep taking information in unless we do something to get the existing information out!

Where does your overload come from? 
- A day of back to back meetings
- A new project
- The to do list
- Working from home
- Dealing with uncertainty and stress ... 

All of these things can bring on a state of overload and overwhelm.

The thing is, we don’t have to ‘suck it up’ or ‘push on through’ or ‘keep it together’. These are old ways which battled or fought with the overload. 

There are newer, smarter ways to understand, rework and redirect overwhelm. 

Applause to the synthesizers

To those who make sense of mess.

Who connect the dots and help us understand what’s going on. 

To those who just look at a spreadsheet and know what’s going on. 

Who can succinctly summarize the outcomes of a meeting, the key points of a presentation, the plot of a film. 

We applaud you. We so need you. 

You work out what the key pieces are and deliver them to us with clarity, precision and brevity. 

You cut to the chase, get to the point, and bring things together so we can move things along. 

Your way of distilling and reducing, integrating without losing meaning and holding the important bits together is needed. 

In all of the information, you find a way through so we can follow. 

And then together we can decide and act, putting ideas into practice. 

To the synthesisers who comb through complexity and are able to bring a lot of information together in one piece, thank you. 

Please keep doing what you do. 

Look around and listen out for the synthesisers who help bring disparate pieces of information together, help build understanding and help make collaboration easier ... thank you. 

Know a great synthesiser? Get in contact with them and say thank you. 

A small task can take up a lot of space

It may not take very long to complete when it comes to doing it, but there is often one task on our list that becomes a blocker in our productivity flow. 

It could be the task you don’t want to do, the task that seems fiddly or complex, or the task you are dreading. 

And disproportionately, we spend so much time thinking about it, worrying, rehearsing and analyzing or imagining it. 

This task occupies too much of our precious cognitive load and mental bandwidth... and life!

Many other actions and tasks get polluted by that one blockage. It may not be connected or part of the same project but it blocks progress all the same. 

When we decide to start or work on and complete this task, things become easier. 

Some pressure is relieved, and we can begin to flow with our productivity again. 

So how about it? Start it, tackle it, finish it ... a weight gets lifted, the load and pressure is released. 

Is there something on your list that matches “that kind of task” - the one task ... that takes up so much of our thinking? Blocking better progress? 

Could you do it today? 

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.