• Attention: Research shows that we're bad at dividing our attention between different tasks.
• Working memory allows us to hold multiple bits of information for the short term. This is important for activities such as reading, writing, having a conversation, and making decisions. But the working memory is a bottleneck as it is limited in capacity and duration.

Every person will have different levels of attention and working memory, which will vary throughout the day and years. Being aware of these cognitive bottlenecks can help you to avoid being overconfident and make better decisions.

Our limited sensory capabilities mean that we tend to overestimate our cognitive ability. We try to simultaneously process multiple streams of information or work on several tasks at the same time.

So we respond by multitasking. We believe we will be quicker by combining t...