Recently, I’ve been seeing the term “cognitive overhead” in a few different places online. I had never heard of this term before, so I looked it up.
There are a lot of websites that give the same definition, attributed to web designer and engineer David Demaree: “how many logical connections or jumps your brain has to make in order to understand or contextualize the thing you’re looking at.”
Ok, great. So web designers clearly want to make things instantly understandable so viewers will click or take whatever action simply and automatically (think of the Amazon orange “Buy Now” button for instance).
But, that’s not how I’ve seen the term used at all. Instead, people are talking about saving or protecting their own cognitive overhead as if there’s only so much stuff they can have rattling around in their brains. If one more item gets stuffed in their brain, then some other – and likely more important – item will no longer be accessible to them.
Here are two examples:
Some people eat the same lunch at work every single day so it’s one less thing to think about. It just takes takes this decision off their plate, so to speak. This was mentioned in a recent Joe Pinsker article in The Atlantic, and this idea of eating the same meals is also something that the late neurologist and author Oliver Sacks mentioned in interviews.
And, other people – siting the inspiration of Steve Jobs – are wearing the same outfit every day. They buy multiples of every item of clothing and simply wear the same thing over and over again. They stare into their closets and see 5 pairs of black jeans and 10 identical shirts and get dressed with absolutely no thought.
In both these cases, people are saying they want to save their thinking and decision making for more important parts of their lives.
Ok, fine. I understand their frustration with the number of decisions we all have to make every day.
But, is cognitive overhead really affecting us? By making a custom omelet for breakfast, are you truly running the risk of not being able to solve an important problem at work today?
I’m hoping to see more information on this idea. For now, eliminating small decisions to save brain space for big decisions isn’t a strategy I’ll be suggesting to my coaching clients. I’ll wait to hear more about this topic.
