Cognitive Overload

“I just need you from the neck down today.”

Comedian Matt McCusker was working a labourer job when his foreman gave him this advice. No optimising. No philosophy. Just “move that over there. Don’t ask any questions.”

Life with a quieter internal monologue is so much simpler. It’s a state far more of us used to occupy–not necessarily less stressful, but less mentally taxing. Today, our minds are engaged constantly. By the time the moon shows its face, our psyche is often pulled out of shape.

This experience maps neatly onto Cognitive Load Theory, an idea proposed by John Sweller in the 1980s, which suggests the brain has a finite processing capacity. In broad terms, there are three types of cognitive load:

• Intrinsic Load: The attention necessary to learn something and how difficult the task is. 
• Extraneous Load: Unnecessary distractions that pull from attention – like background TV noise, or poorly organised study materials.
• Germane Load: “efforts that improve learning outcomes but aren’t strictly necessary,” like “self-explanations and retrieval practice.” 

Our working memory has a fixed capacity. When the task itself is demanding, additional distractions quickly tip us beyond what we can manage. Cognitive load isn’t just about how hard something is, it refers to how much competition we have for our attention.

When this balance falters, we reach cognitive overload. In simple terms, it’s what happens when the demands placed on us exceed our capacity to process them. Over time, this state of mental exhaustion becomes a precursor to burnout, not part of it.

Afterall, attention is the raw material for learning, creativity and performance. Modern life fragments that attention relentlessly. Social media, notifications, content feeds and ambient distractions hurtle thousands of daily inputs through our eyes and ears. Our brains treat them as a marathon of micro‑decisions.

And then we wonder why it feels so difficult to concentrate.

When we’re constantly consuming, we stretch our cognitive bandwidth. The more we stretch, the more likely we are to fold. Fuzzy, interrupted thinking shouldn’t be a daily experience. It’s often a signal that we’re taking on more than we can meaningfully process.

NOTHING NEW HERE

At this point, it’s tempting to conclude that modern technology is uniquely corrosive. But fear of new tools is not new. What is new is the scale, speed, and intimacy with which these tools now operate.

The invention of writing itself was criticised by Plato in 370 BC’s Phaedrus: “You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding.” Every technological leap sparks anxiety about attention, memory, and intellectual decay.

History suggests these fears are often overstated. Writing isn’t viewed as a net negative today… But that doesn’t mean the concern is misplaced. What distinguishes the current moment is the ubiquity: tools that are portable, permanent and engineered to aggressively harvest attention.

The takeaway here is agency. Digital escapes are effortlessly accessible by design. Easy to consume, expensive to process. When we’re wrestling to manage our attention and energy, the only answer is to introduce friction where none exists.

We don’t gorge ourselves on Snickers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We recognise it’s not in our best interest. Our attentional diet is no different.

MORE THAN A MYTH

This isn’t just philosophical. The mere presence of a mobile phone increases cognitive load, a finding supported by multiple studies. People perform better when their phones are in another room. If a device is nearby—”visible, powered on or not”—it still siphons attention.

That’s before we consider the content itself. How much of what we’re consuming is true? A 2025 study found that over half of the top 100 mental‑health Tik-Toks contained misinformation. This adds another layer of cognitive demand: constant evaluation. Believe or doubt? Trust or verify? The burden of verification has become a routine tax on attention.

Holding attention today is work. Each finger‑flick of a feed presents endless forks in the road: outrage or indifference, depth or distraction, cat video or political meltdown.

SYMPTOM SALE

This is where overload becomes profitable at your expense. Overloaded people buy things. We see it daily: apps selling calm and retreats selling dopamine detoxes. These offer symptom relief. We need system support.

To address cognitive overload, burnout, and chronic stress at the root, we have to support the systems we rely on in modern life—cognitive, nervous, immune, cardiovascular. Improve the system, and you improve the symptoms.

That means shaping environments that make the right actions easier. Eating to support energy and resilience. Being deliberate with attention, removing apps and disabling notifications. Reintroducing monotony and time to think. Commuting without technology. Being alone. Building restorative habits into the week: journaling, scheduling, brain dumps.

None of this is reinventing the wheel. Yet it’s routinely overlooked, especially by those pursuing performance: fixating on the speedometer while ignoring the engine coughing beneath the hood.

The world’s made it easy to ride trains of thought that belong to other people. But following tracks laid by others rarely takes us where we actually want to go. The week ahead offers downtime before the new year: a chance to pause, reset, and set intentions for January.

Choose where your mind goes.