Tell me now
I think I figured out why cognitive load wears people down: they try to store everything in their heads. This morning someone told me they had a problem and would tell me about it later. I told them no, get it out of your brain right now. Every "later" sits in your head all day, taking up room you need for real thinking, and half the time it never comes back out because you forget it.
My brain works the other way. When something comes up, I deal with it right then, or I write it down so I stop carrying it. Some people would say I'm not prioritizing my time. Maybe. But I'm prioritizing my cognitive load, and I only jump on the things that matter. I've watched plenty of people do the opposite, saying they'll deal with it later, until their plate is so full they can't think straight.
Think of it like dinner. You can only fit so much on your plate, and your stomach can only take so much of what's on it. The easiest fix is to put less on the plate.
Your brain has a handful of slots
Working memory is small, and anything you're holding onto for later sits in one of those slots until you deal with it or write it down. The old rule of thumb was seven. Newer research says it's closer to four, which makes the case for clearing them even stronger.
George Miller's 1956 paper put short-term memory at about seven items, give or take two
Nelson Cowan's 2001 review brought that down to roughly four
A 2011 study by E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister found that making a specific plan for an unfinished task stopped it from nagging at people
Where AI takes the load
AI is the biggest help I've found for keeping those slots clear. I hand it the easy, repetitive work that used to eat my attention, and it hands me back short summaries so I can decide whether the full detail is worth my time. If I were still doing all of this by hand, I'd be burning slots on chores.
The result is that I'm running more projects than I ever have at one time, across topics that in some cases have nothing to do with each other. Part of that is how I'm wired. Most of it is that I've stopped filling my head with the basic stuff.
Scheduling all my meetings
Prep for every meeting
Research, plus a second pass that checks the research
Quick summaries first, full detail only when I ask for it
The workout spreadsheet
A month ago I started working with a personal trainer. I love his programming, but he sends it as a spreadsheet that reads like a decoder ring. No offense to him, it works for him. It doesn't work for me. I don't want to stand in the gym with Excel open on my phone, figuring out the movements, the reps, and how many rounds.
So every time he updates the spreadsheet, I send it to Claude and ask it to build the workouts and put them on my calendar. Now I open my calendar, tap the day's session, and there's a clean table telling me exactly what to do. I'm at the gym several days a week and I always have my phone. I'm not printing a spreadsheet.
Saturday: 60 minutes of cardio with a max effort every fifth minute
Easy minutes in zone 2, max efforts in zones 3 to 4, heart rates listed in the invite
The same zones are already programmed into my watch
What to hand off first
Start with whatever you do over and over and have to look up every time. Those are the tasks that keep taking a slot, and they're the easiest ones for AI to take off your plate. You only have so much time and so much room in your head each day, and I'd rather spend both on the hard calls.
Anything that lives in a spreadsheet you open on your phone
Calendar back-and-forth and meeting prep
First-pass research and summaries
Any "I'll deal with it later" that keeps coming back to mind
Kathy
The AI Boss