In this day and age where most us spend over 20 hours a week on devices (that's not counting our work we do on our computers and laptops), I'm exploring what this ubiquitous connectivity does to our brains and lives....
Cognitive Overload was first discovered in the 1980s when psychologists found that our brain's working memory capacity has inherent processing limits.
Today, chances are very high that Cognitive Overload is hurting your productivity and affecting your well-being. With ever increasing distractions from our 'Always Connected' lifestyle, the mental effort required to process all this information has gone through the roof.
Here are some facts:
74 gigabytes - 9 DVDs worth of information is sent to the average American on any given day. Information received at work not included. (Study: USC Marshall School of Business)
Most people connect to more than 30 different media sources daily, ranging from traditional media outlets on TV, Radio, Telephone to new digital sources consumed on tablets, smart phones, or gaming devices.
28% of our workday is spent managing emails. That's about 2 hours and 14 minutes each day. Most professionals receive over 50 work-related emails per day. Managers and executives receive between 200-300. In a recent study only 6 percent of professionals responded that they could process more than 50 emails per day.
When at work we are interrupted (by email, phone call, text message, colleague, etc.) every 8 minutes. That accounts for over 7 interruptions per hour. A study by Basex found that the calculated cost of interruptions in lost working hours to US businesses is $588 billion a year.
How is Cognitive Overload affecting your productivity and life?
- Do you struggle to focus on one thing for more than 30 minutes?
- Do you feel a constant itch to check your emails and text messages?
- Are you overwhelmed by all the ideas and information you keep in your head?
- What can you do to manage Cognitive Overload?
A good first step: Raise Your Awareness!
I recommend taking a few minutes to answer these questions:
How many times am I interrupted in an hour?
How often do I check emails or text messages every hour?
What ideas or issues do I tend to repeatedly obsess about?
Good thoughts
Alright this post rocks! That's why I upvoted, following ya, and resteemed this. I ponder these things frequently.
I work in the healthcare field. Documentation in my field of work (physical Therapy ) is insane. While i agree our documentation should reflect why the individual requires skilled PT intervention, the key phrases and things medicare and other insurance companies want is what i have coined as "taking the love out of healthcare " . In my field high productivity is also required. While i generally do not struggle with That , there are occassions where one actually has to be documenting while executing patient care. This is called point of service. We have to be hyper focused to keep that productivity up that who unfortunately ends up getting the short end of the stick? The patient! I don't allow this but there are some therapists that just can't handle it so either they skim on quality care or get yelled at for "poor productivity" .
I didn't even think about the radio being a source but it is. Makes sense as when i commute home some times i just drive in silence . After all my mind has been taxed mentally, emtionally all day.
But i Happen to also be a person (since childhood) that constantly has topics in mind and i am generally frustrated i don't have an outlet for them. That is why steemit is great. Facebook never quite made the cut in that arena.
People are def in information overload though. Especially when one considers the fact that you can literally receive news from the other side of the globe about some catastrophic event within minutes to seconds of it happening! This puts a lot of people in panic mode, constantly honed into mainstream media, etc.
Even with my weird fast moving brain the need to press the reset button is definitely there. And i do it through hobbies like coloring, running, exercise, sleeping (yeah that isn't a hobby but it resets the brain)
I'm just getting back on Steemit and read your comment again, thanks I really appreciate it....inspires me to write more about this topic
Yes continue!
Cognitive overload huh?
For me its how life is with or without electronic media, though of course the ability to consume over 50 hours of media per DAY does make life with all the media outlets extra taxing.
I have a.. condition? called low latent inhibition, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage, for example: I can usually watch two tv series simultaneously just fine, or text and drive. Okay thats not that good of a joke, I really really can't drive, at all.
How do I manage the constant load of information thats causing cognitive overload and burning me out?
well...
ADHD medication, good supplements such as fish oil, meditation, and proper diet.
Hi! I am a robot. I just upvoted you! I found similar content that readers might be interested in:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cognitive-overload-hurting-your-productivity-sascha-bosio
Hi @sfsacha, so stoked to see you on here! You are going to be a great contribution to this amazing platform. Nik is going to be stoked too! Can't wait to see what you do! ~ LEE
Yo Sascha! Welcome to Steemit!
Dude, write up an introduceyourself post, make sure you use that as the first "tag" in the tag section.
Stoked to see you on here! Read this: How To Make Steemit Work (hit that link, dawg)