[MUSIC PLAYING]
You've heard the saying a million times,
"if you want something done, give it to a busy person."
There's a certain logic to it.
Productive people tend to manage time better.
But you know who coined that bit of wisdom?
Ben Franklin.
In our relationship to productivity
has changed since the 1700s.
Task that once took several hours
can be completed in seconds.
And when we find ourselves in a situation
where every technological development demands an update
to our own biological operating systems
just so we can keep pace, which means our brains are constantly
jumping from one task to another, splintering
our neural resources in ways we weren't necessarily built for.
All these inputs can actually drive productivity down,
it can lead to information overload.
Here's Cognitive Psychologist Daniel Levilton.
Most of us don't cope very well with information overload
in the workplace because in the middle of it,
we're not really aware that it's happening.
And we feel as though, if we take five minutes off,
we're going to fall seven minutes behind.
Here's how it starts.
Your boss sends an email, asking if you can join a department
head meeting this afternoon.
Could you put together a short PowerPoint
with some data analytics?
No, problem you fire up the program
and start sifting through hundreds of presentation
layouts and color schemes, but then you see a note
from the project lead.
Hey, what's up with those files from yesterday?
Can you send out the link?
Then your work BFF rolls her chair over
to tell you what's just happened to her.
It'll just take a second.
Just as she's wrapping up the story,
you get a phone call from a team member.
Did you see the latest email from marketing?
Phew, I'm just thinking about all of that
or said another way.
I think I'm feeling the effects of cortisol.
Cortisol is the stress hormone, it's
part of the fight or flight system.
It's toxic in large doses.
It shuts down your immune system, your digestive system,
and cellular repair that's normally going on,
so your "housekeeping."
The problem is that with information
that has become an onslaught for us,
information overload is defined as us
being presented with or bombarded with more information
than our brains can handle.
According to experts, there comes a point
when our brain stops seeing a list of tasks
to simply check off.
Instead, it sees a threat.
Possibly several.
Maybe the threat is scarcity, not enough time, not
enough energy, or it's the threat
of failing, or of disappointing others.
These threats can feel overwhelming,
and when we're overwhelmed, we freeze up.
This type of workplace paralysis may
feel like a condition of our modern world, and in many ways
it is, but it's also a variation on the ancient human dilemma.
That dilemma is the burden of choice.
The anxiety of knowing our decisions matter,
and that our life is in our hands,
Understanding this anxiety was the holy grail for early 1900s
French philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre.
He noticed that for all the obvious benefits that
came with more freedoms, happiness wasn't always
one of them.
And instead of relishing the opportunity
for more choice and responsibility,
people had a tendency to avoid making important decisions
because they were scared of making the wrong one,
then they would pretend like they never
had a real choice in the first place.
A habit he called mauvaise foi, or "bad faith."
This observation led Sartre to suggest quote,
"people often prefer a very limited, punishing regime--
rather than face the anxiety of freedom."
It's not just post-enlightenment philosophers
who grappled with this paradox, you
can find discussions of these very themes
as far back as the biblical stories, which is just
to say we've been contending with the psychological
underpinnings of workload paralysis for a very long time.
The fact is, choosing where to direct our attention is hard.
That's the anxiety of freedom, and it's
even harder in an age of split second decisions
and daunting to do lists.
Luckily, there are a few things we
can do to guard against information overload.
Take a walk, look at some art.
And if you can, stop some of the flow of all that information.
The other thing we can do is impose some productivity time.
Most things that we care about require concentration,
multitasking is a myth.
You aren't really doing all these things at once
because the brain doesn't work that way.
You're rapidly shifting between them, and each of those shifts
comes with a metabolic cost and burns up glucose.
So I put a sign on my door, I put my computer in
do not disturb mode or focus mode
for two hours at a stretch.
And everybody knows, you can't reach me during those times.
And here's a trick you might not know.
If you're feeling paralyzed by the tasks ahead,
take a very quick nap.
Naps are a way of hitting the reset button in your brain.
And a 2o-minute nap, even a 10 or 15-minute nap
if you can take a short nap, is equivalent to an extra 90
minutes of sleep the night before.
It really does help reset.
In a way the paralysis that comes with so much choice
is a sign of progress.
It's a good problem to have.
You'd rather have too many choices than none at all,
but managing them to stay productive,
requires more tools in our mental toolbox than generations
before us need it in theirs.
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[BLEEP]
I think I'm feeling the effects of cortisol.
Cortisol.
[LAUGHS]