Death from Cognitive Overload
Have you noticed how many decisions you need to do every day? And have you noticed that the number of decisions increases? And have you noticed that your brain suffers from fatigue?
Do you want to listen to music on Spotify? You need to choose. We used to have radio.
Do you want to watch a movie on Netflix? You need to choose. We used to have linear TV.
Do you want to eat lunch? You can assemble your own salad.
Do you want to buy groceries? You not only need to choose, you also need to pay attention during self-checkout.
People need to make too many decisions. And our brains don’t get any rest from decision making. Any cognitive decision making requires energy. Energy that might be missing in the important parts of your life such as conversations with loved ones, building relationships.
The internet (this is from 2016) says that people spend more than 15 minutes choosing what to watch on Netflix. That’s not what I want. I don’t want to make a decision, I want to watch a movie or a show. Give me that.
It happens to me sometimes that I give up. And instead of watching something, I doomscroll for ten minutes and then leave in disgust. I made an effort to turn it on, I made my brain think about what I want to watch and the outcome is exactly zero. Energy wasted.
My favourite example of eliminating conscious decisions which take energy is how people dress. Steve Jobs was basically wearing a uniform. Albert Einstein was doing the same. Because that was not important to them.
If you spend most of your day making decisions for money, because it’s your job, that eats your cognitive energy. It doesn’t need to be your job. It can be your fashion choices that eat most of your cognitive energy. But then the energy needs to be missing somewhere. You have finite amounts of energy.
And if your brain is dumb as mine sometimes is, you don’t realize it. You just keep on adding the decisions to your plate. And you tire your human with cognitive overload. And then nothing else fits. You are stressed. I get stressed about what I should eat for lunch - I don’t know, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to make that decision. Someone should do it for me. Because it’s not important to me at that moment. It only adds stress to me.
You might argue that all this self-service gives you freedom and power. Well, Freedom Isn’t Free. It costs you. It’s worth it, but it costs you.
The only decision you should make today is about where you want to spend your energy. Not everything is equally important.