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Productive cognitive load: make the most of your working memory
Balancing Our Mental Effort
To increase our learning performance, we need to balance our cognitive load. It helps to understand what the three types of cognitive loads are:
- Intrinsic cognitive Load: The inner load we feel when we are calculating something complex. This is a fixed load on the brain.
- Extraneous cognitive load: Presenting information or a task in a certain way, like visually or verbally, making it easier to understand.
- Germane cognitive load: It is the flow-chart constructions of the brain, which help in long-term learning. The mind makes information easier to grasp by creating maps and inner processes, helping us understand better.
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Explaining Cognitive Load Theory (CLT)
CLT identifies our minds as information processing systems.
When we work on an unfamiliar task, we depend on our "working memory". It is limited in its capacity and period of time it holds information. The less familiar you are with a task, the more you depend on your working memory. However, when you are familiar with a job, you can complete it on auto-pilot.
Overloading the working memory capacity
Your working memory capacity can be overloaded in three ways, making you feel mentally drained:
- New routines can prevent you from the ability to do things on auto-pilot and will instead draw on your limited working memory capacity.
- Anxiety also reduces your working memory capacity, making it more challenging to work through any mental problem that needs problem-solving.
- Distractions that are not directly relevant to your tasks can further increase the demand on your working memory capacity.
Effective remedial strategies
- Try to establish new routines and master them so that you are not constantly using your working memory capacity for mundane tasks.
- It's important to put effort into stress management, meaning eating well, exercising, establishing a bedtime routine, and finding relaxing activities.
- Focus on organising your time for your tasks and try to be disciplined about distractions.
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The Pressure Of Time
Most leaders have familiar approaches to managing time: setting goals, planning, delegating, tracking commitments, and creating to-do lists. While these approaches do help in self-organization, they are not adequate in helping achieve high levels of sustainable, long-term performance.
The challenge is to have a fast-paced occupation while avoiding burnout, slippage, and sub-optimal performance.
Sustainable Productivity
Instead of increasing the number of productive hours, we can focus on getting the right things done in a timely way. We also need to restore and balance ourselves, our colleagues, family and environment, instead of a neurotic or pathological focus on deadlines.
Find out what's truly important to us and use the finite resource of time wisely.
Phantom Workload
Phantom workload looks like real work but results in massive unproductivity and even conflict in an organization. The pressure to meet unrealistic expectations causes a vicious cycle of further workload.
Leaders need to take a hard look at what is being avoided or not addressed. Facing difficult tasks that were 'swept under the carpet' earlier strengthens them further to make hard decisions and face difficult people and situations.
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Never stop learning
Research shows that people with more education have a greater cognitive reserve and this works as a protection in the face of mental decline.
But there's a twist to it: educated people tend to get Alzheimer's at a later age but once they get it, they're getting it at a higher load of the disease and appear to decline at a faster rate.
Crosswords
Cognitive activities like crossword puzzles, reading or playing music may delay memory decline among people who eventually developed dementia.
Stereotype threat
It happens when a person is in a situation where they are anxious that they may conform to a negative stereotype aimed at his or her social group.
Positive stereotypes, or success on previous memory tasks, can help combat this negativity.